Historian in Residence and Westmeath County Council

Headlines from the Westmeath Examiner, 6 November 1920. The accompanying report described how ‘Black and Tans’ fired at a tricolour flying over the county offices in Mullingar. The tricolour was flying at half-mast as a mark of respect for Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, who had recently died on hunger strike while in Brixton Prison, London. The Black and Tans then forced their way into the building and removed the tricolour. A myriad of similar incidents occurred during November and December 1920.

As part of the Westmeath County Council Decade of Centenaries programme, Ian Kenneally was appointed Historian in Residence in July 2020. The residency was supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media in partnership with Westmeath County Council. The Historian in Residence programme aimed to mark the centenaries of 1920 in the most appropriate fashion, given the restrictions that were in place due to Covid-19.

The Historian in Residence produced a series of blog posts, with contributions from other historians, that provided 35,000 words of content, most of it previously unpublished. All the articles discussed Westmeath during the War of Independence, particularly the events of 1920.

That blog and a series of short documentaries, which are hosted on the Westmeath County Council website, can be accessed here.

In November 2020, the Historian in Residence and the Westmeath Independent produced
a 16-page supplement devoted to the destruction of the paper's offices by the Crown forces
in November 1920. That supplement can be found on the Westmeath Independent's website.

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