CHAPTER XV.
THE BATTLE OF ASHTOWN.
Lord French was due to arrive back in the Viceregal Lodge on Friday, 19th December, 1919. That arrangement was kept a dead secret, and even the higher officials in the Lodge and in Dublin Castle were unaware of his plans. But we were well aware of the arrangement. The time has not yet come when the source of our information may be disclosed.
We not only knew the day but the hour. Further, we knew that when Lord French returned by the Midland Railway he would not travel into the terminus of that line (Broadstone Station) in the city, but would alight at the little wayside station of Ash town. So we laid our plans.
Ashtown is about four English miles from the centre of the city, but only about two miles from the northern residential quarter. You travel to it along the main road that leads from Dublin to the Northwest of Ireland, one of the best trunk roads in the country, passing in a straight line into the heart of Meath, through Navan, Kells, Cavan, and on to Enniskillen. About two and a half miles after you leave the tramway line you come to Ashtown. The station itself is not on the main road—it is about two hundred yards down on a little by-road to the right. There is no village of Ashtown; the district has fewer houses than probably any other place so near the city. There seems to have been no reason for making a station there except, perhaps, for loading and unloading horses for racing and hunting.
To most people Ashtown simply means one house—Kelly’s publichouse, commonly known as the “Half-way House.” It stands just at the cross-roads where you turn to your right off the main road to go to the station. That little by-road, which, as I have said, leads on the right hand side to the railway, cuts across the main road almost at right angles and leads on the left to the Phoenix Park and to Castleknock. Thus when one travels out from the city and stands at the cross-roads beside the Half-way House one is within two hundred yards of the station on the right, and within one hundred yards of the Phoenix Park gate on the left. At this gate there then stood a Police Barrack, where three or four D.M.P. men used to be stationed, but the barrack was closed a few days before our adventure. A quarter of a mile inside the gate was the Viceregal Lodge.
Of houses there were very few in the vicinity. The only one near the Half-way House was the residence of Mr. Peard, the owner of the Park Racecourse which adjoins the main road. On the city side of Ashtown there were several institutions—such as orphanages and convents—the nearest being the famous Deaf and Dumb Institute kept by the Christian Brothers. Away to the right of the railway is the famous Dunsink Observatory.
I have thought it necessary to describe the spot in this detail, because even to Dublin people the Ashtown district is comparatively unfamiliar.
The special train in which the Viceroy was to return was due to arrive at Ashtown at 11.40 a.m. Half an hour before that our party had arrived on the scene. We had started from Fleming’s, in Drumcondra, that morning, and at Mrs. Martin Conlan’s, of Phibsboro’, I had stopped for a cup of tea. There were eleven of us all told in the exploit—namely, Mick McDonnell, Tom Keogh (later a Free State Officer killed in the Civil War); Martin Savage (killed that day); Sean Treacy (killed in action in Talbot Street, Dublin, ten months later); Seumas Robinson, Sean Hogan, Paddy Daly (later a Major-General in the Free State Army); Vincent Byrne, Tom Kilkoyne, Joe Leonard and myself.
