You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Today we're taking you back to the Easter Rising of 1916, when a group of Irish Rebels launched an armed revolt against British rule.

Simon Watts has been listening through the archives.

It's Easter Monday 1916, and Irish Rebels are trying to start a revolution against British rule.

They set up their headquarters at the General Post Office in Dublin, where Stella Archer worked.

I was up in the instrument room, where the telegraphs were.

I rode over to Midday, there was a motion down on the street in the breaking of glass, and everybody wanted to see

through the windows to see what was going on.

But shortly after that, the doors lined open, and a number of men came into the room dressed in green uniforms with rifles in their hand.

They ordered everybody out to get out immediately.

The Rebels quickly got to work barricading the GPO, with almost anything they could find.

There was a scene of great activity there, and they were filling up male bikes full of coal.

There's only thing they could get, and the sellers were full of coal in the place.

The first thing I knew I was drafted into the coal detail.

And we're nearly smothered, the dust was rising all over the place.

Now, the inside, we barricaded all the windows.

Barricaded with a lot of stuff that we got through the wax works.

Effigies of the King and the Queen, and we used them to stick on the windows.

Then the leaders, Patrick Pearce and James Connolly, pinned up a notice outside the post office.

Irish men, and Irish women, in the name of God, and of the dead generations from which he receives her old tradition of nationhood.

Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag, and strikes for her freedom.

We hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a sovereign independent state.

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