Rescuing History: The Four Courts Explosion
Irish History Podcast
Fin Dwyer
4.7 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2019
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This bonus show looks at a famous event that haunts Irish history - the Four Courts Explosion. In June 1922 during the opening phase of the Irish Civil War, the Public Records Office was destroyed in a massive explosion that rocked Dublin City Centre. Several centuries of Irish historical records had been stored in the building, most of which were incinerated. In this episode I explain the background to the explosion and what was lost. Then in the second part of the podcast I visit the National Archives on Bishop Street where I meet Zoe Reid who works restoring items rescued from the site in the aftermath of the explosion.
Thanks to Zoe Reid (twitter.com/NAIConservator) for taking the time to talk to me & Joanne Carrol in the National Library for her help in organising this episode.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a passenger announcement. You can now book your train on Uber and get 10% back in credits to spend on Uber eats. |
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| 0:19.0 | Check the Uber app. |
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| 0:27.0 | We can't save you from an alien invasion. |
| 0:30.0 | But we can give you some out-of-this-world customer service. We can't help you break the world |
| 0:35.0 | record for having the most rubber ducks. |
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| 0:41.0 | So what are you waiting for? |
| 0:42.0 | Go to mobiles. |
| 0:43.4 | Code at UK this Black Friday to discover all the best phones, |
| 0:46.9 | sims and more from an award-winning retailer. Hello and this is the Four Horse Explosion, where history was lost. |
| 1:04.0 | While Partisans, my weekly series and Irish involvement in the Spanish Civil War begins on Monday, |
| 1:09.2 | this is an extra show on one of the most controversial events in the Irish Civil War, an event that continues |
| 1:15.4 | to haunt Irish history into the present day. I am of course talking about the destruction |
| 1:20.6 | of the Four Courts and in particular one specific building inside it, the Public Records |
| 1:25.8 | Office. This explosion saw centuries of Irish historical records stored in the Public Records |
| 1:31.2 | Office destroyed. |
| 1:32.8 | And over the course of this podcast I'll be recording at the site of the explosion |
| 1:36.8 | before I head up to the National Archives where I'll meet Zoe Reed, he'll tell us about the |
| 1:41.9 | scale of the destruction caused and show us some of the documents |
... |
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