Bandit Country: The IRA and South Armagh

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In the months before the 1994 IRA ceasefire, the British army rebuilt its base at the police station – known as Operation Rectify, it was the largest British military airmobile operation since D-Day – to withstand attacks by the Provisional IRA’s South Armagh Brigade. Dust Jackets are not guaranteed and when still present, they will have various degrees of tear and damage. Former Armagh footballer Oisín McConville on the terrace of the Crossmaglen Rangers pitch which is overlooked by the still heavily fortified police station.

Armagh was divided into several baronies: Armagh was held by the O'Rogans, Lower Fews was held by O'Neill of the Fews, and Upper Fews were under governance of the O'Larkins, who were later displaced by the MacCanns. The county was administered by Armagh County Council from 1899 until the abolition of county councils in Northern Ireland in 1973. Spectres of characters both mythic and real thread through these poems, giving them a slippery, ghostly quality.But I do think it’s almost come full circle again in that obviously because of some of the headlines we’re still getting, that people think that we’re outlaws here. From an early age, he was told if a bomb exploded to “get down low” in the closest place he could find. County Armagh ( Irish: Contae Ard Mhacha, named after its county town, Armagh) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland.

The south Armagh historian looks impatient waiting for us outside Northern Ireland’s most fortified police building and darts across the Cullaville Road when we pull up. Mains was stationed at Forkhill but regularly went to Crossmaglen where he and his colleagues were flanked by 15 soldiers when they went out on foot patrol. A descendant of poet and rapparee, Séamus Mór Mac Murchaidh (who was hanged in Armagh Jail in 1750), Walsh is among a growing legion of voluntary ambassadors promoting the area’s geology and archaeology as well as its myths and legends, poets and scribes – often through music and poetry.This figure is based on a tally of all persons resident in the wards comprising County Armagh on 29 April 2001, i. When I was 10 years of age and wanted to do that, I would have had to pick my route home, because if you ran into soldiers, the chances were you’d get hit with the butt of a gun. Mains became deputy head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and was involved in many high-profile cases, giving evidence to the Smithwick tribunal about claims of IRA/Garda collusion relating to the murders of two senior RUC colleagues.