Based on
this post by
@Bluestorm, I collected a couple interesting aspects about the
destruction of Four Courts in Dublin in 1922.
If this explosion was merely an accident, it certainly helped to get rid of any historical evidence favoring a more Irish-centric view of the conflict between Ireland and the Crown.
During the Irish Civil War in 1922, there was an explosion in the Four Courts building complex, "the likes of which Dublin had never seen before, after which most of the buildings, including the Public Records Office, were destroyed by fire." (
Irish Times)
"The huge explosion at the Four Courts during the Irish Civil War in 1922."
Two days into the Civil War, a massive explosion destroyed the Public Records Office attached to Dublin’s Four Courts and with it hundreds of years of documented history.
The census records for the whole of the 19th century going back to the first in 1821 were incinerated. Chancery records, detailing British rule in
Ireland going back to the 14th century and grants of land by the crown, were also destroyed along with thousands of wills and title deeds.
The records of various chief secretaries to Ireland and centuries of
Church of Ireland parish registers vanished in the fire.
What was lost?
Apart from a few fragments, the Irish Censuses of 1821, 1831, 1841, and 1851 were burned in the Public Records Office. So, too, were just over half of all the Anglican Church of Ireland registers deposited there following the dis-establishment of the state church in 1869. In addition, the majority of wills and testamentary records that had been proved in Ireland were reduced to ashes (although transcripts of many testamentary records survive). All pre-1900 documents from the legal courts were lost, as were local government records for the same period. -
The fire that destroyed all Irish records - the myth and the reality
"The attack by the National Army on an anti-Treaty force entrenched in the Four Courts was one of the most important events in modern Irish history, if not the most important. The Four Courts has been, since its completion in the early 19th century, a significant physical presence along the Liffey quays in Dublin, and because fighting during the first hours of the Civil War was mainly confined to the area immediately surrounding the complex, the battle drew large crowds of spectators, and the action was comprehensively recorded in newsprint, photographs and even newsreel film. In spite of this it is clear, from some accounts of the battle, that the authors had little or no knowledge of the physical nature of the buildings in the Four Courts complex, their external and internal layouts and indeed, something as simple as the number of buildings in the courts complex.
In 1922, as today, the complex contained four distinct buildings, the Four Courts, the Public Records Office, the north block and the Land Registry Office. Dorothy McArdle, who was in Dublin at the time of the battle, suggested her lack of understanding of the complex in her account of the battle, by referring to the Four Courts as “the building”. Recent publications, including the prestigious Atlas of the Irish Revolution, have maps describing the complex which fail to show one of the four buildings on the site, the Land Registry Office. Although the smallest of the buildings on the campus, it protected much of the north block, which the anti-Treaty garrison had made their headquarters and where they stored their explosives, from observation and gunfire from the National Army-occupied Bridewell Police Station.
Ireland Heals Her Wounds (1925).
"The Four Courts - almost destroyed by shellfire in Republican outbreak - are now almost restored.
Remember those desperate days just 3 years ago?
Today, Dublin's most imposing building rises like a phoenix from the ashes."
Meanwhile, the authentic original Irish documents have been replaced with "credible" substitute documents from British records:
"Project Circle" is
The medieval Irish Chancery was the secretariat of the kings and queens of England, responsible for issuing royal letters under the Great Seal of Ireland. The lord chancellor of Ireland was the keeper of this Great Seal, which authenticated documents on behalf of the crown. The chancery issued legal documents relating primarily to property rights, grants of land, appointments to office, pardons, and fines. Outgoing letters were also recorded by chancery clerks, who copied the text onto long rolls of parchment known as the chancery rolls. The chancery rolls suffered loss, damage, and neglect over time through multiple fires and poor storage conditions in Dublin Castle. In 1810, the Irish Records Commission was established to survey the surviving rolls and produce a calendar of the medieval records up to the year 1600. By 1816, the rolls were moved to the Record Tower of Dublin Castle and the IRC had produced this remarkable report on the chancery rolls. -
Ghost Records: A 19th-century manuscript copy of lost chancery rolls
In this context, here's an interesting quote from a text about the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age:
In the 1640’s and 1650’s, a civil war griped the British Empire. This war combined with the effects of a series of failed harvest that led to famines, and plague epidemics killed approximately a quarter of a million people in England, Scotland and Wales or 7% of the population. The population in Ireland alone fell by 20%. In 1655, it was recorded that ‘a man might travel twenty or thirty miles [in Ireland] and not see a living creature’ except for ‘very aged men with women and children’ whose skin was ‘black like an oven because of the terrible famine.’ It produced in Scotland a famine of which ‘the lyke had never beine seine in this kingdome heretofor, since it was a natione.’
https://nextgrandminimum.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/little_ice_age_theory.pdf
The above text also has a reference to flooded first floors:
In 1687, there was a great flood in Dublin, Ireland. The lower part of the city was underwater up to the first floor and boats plied in the streets. There was also a great estuary flood in the River Severn in England. In the summer many of the rivers in England were flooded and many people drowned. When the fruit ripened on the trees, great swarms of gnats and insects appeared.
