The 1922 Fire
The Battle of the Four Courts, the opening engagement of the Civil War, began on 28 June 1922. National Army forces of the Irish Free State were attempting to drive Anti-Treaty Republicans from the Four Courts, and other locations in Dublin.
The Anti-Treaty garrison had occupied the Four Courts and the Public Record Office 10 weeks earlier, on the night of Holy Thursday 13 April. The Easter date was significant as it linked their campaign with the Easter Rising of 1916. From April to mid-June 1922 political tensions grew, but there were still friendly contacts between the two sides. In late June the Free State’s National Army surrounded the entire Four Courts complex. In the early hours of Wednesday 28 June they gave the Anti-Treaty forces an ultimatum – evacuate the building or they would open fire.
At around 4.45 am, just before sunrise, an artillery gun firing 18 pound shells opened fire on the building, accompanied by machine gun and rifle fire. The battle had begun.
Cinema newsreel of the fighting in Dublin.
‘The fire left little but tangled iron work, blocks of masonry ... and the charred fragments and ashes of what had once been Public Records’
55th Deputy Keeper’s Report
Early in the afternoon of 30 June, after two days of fighting, the Four Courts was shaken by a tremendous explosion.
This shattered the eastern wall of the Record Treasury of the Public Record Office and threw burning material in among the paper and parchment records. The explosion produced a dramatic pillar of smoke and flung files, books and scrolls high into the air. Scraps and fragments fell on the streets of the city, some even landed in Howth, 10 km away.
The old, dry records on the shelves quickly caught fire. The flames destroyed practically all the records in the Treasury. Within a few hours seven centuries of Ireland’s historical records were gone.
Immediately the opposing sides blamed each other for the disaster. More usefully, though, within days the staff of the Public Record Office began rescuing any surviving records from the ruins. These rare, charred documents, called the ‘Salved Records’, were carefully stored for future investigation.
Amazingly, the fire break designed to save the Record Treasury, worked — but in reverse, protecting the administration office at the front from the terrible fire in the Treasury. This saved many catalogues, and books that described and summarised the records, from the flames.
Along with the Salved Records, these catalogues and summaries were the starting point for our work to create the Virtual Record Treasury.
‘The Records in the Public Record Office were, I fear, almost completely destroyed in the recent fire at the Four Courts. It is regretted that the search required by you is not now possible, and I cannot yet say to what extent the Records have been saved.’
NAI, PRO 2/6/1922, 9 August 1922 From the Assistant Keeper of Records, PRO To an American genealogical enquirer, New York city
Ernie O’Malley on the 1922 Fire
An Excerpt from Inside the Railings: A Portrait of Life in the Public Record Office of Ireland
Actor Maeve Bradley reads from Ernie O’Malley’s autobiography as part of “Inside the Railings: A Portrait of Life within the Public Record Office of Ireland”
Presented by a partnership of the Beyond 2022 research programme, the National Archives (Ireland) and Courts Service.
Clare Consuelo Sheridan on the 1922 Fire
An Excerpt from Inside the Railings: A Portrait of Life in the Public Record Office of Ireland
Actor Shona Gibson reads from Clare Consuelo Sheridan’s Diary as part of “Inside the Railings: A Portrait of Life within the Public Record Office of Ireland”
Presented by a partnership of the Beyond 2022 research programme, the National Archives (Ireland) and Courts Service.
