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| Northumberland Road occupied by British troops after the battle. Reproduced by kind permission of UCD-OFM Partnership. |
Number 25 Northumberland Road was the first strongpoint manned by the Volunteers to fall to the British. The time that the British captured the house is key to establishing a timeline for the entirety of the battle. To this day, researchers debate the time the building was captured due to conflicting accounts. Seamus Grace, in his Bureau of Military History statement given in 1949, estimated that the building was stormed at 10:00 on Wednesday night. Meanwhile, the regimental history of the 2/7th battalion estimates the building’s capture to have taken place after 2:45 pm. It is likely that Grace’s estimate is ‘unrealistically late’ as Hughes et al. (2017) note. Grace’s estimate would unrealistically push back the sequence of events within the battle that continued after the fall of 25 Northumberland Road and contradicts witness statements relating to the other occupied buildings.
Clanwilliam House was the last Irish-occupied building to fall at Mount Street. Joseph O’Connor was a Vice Commandant (2nd In Command) of the 3rd Battalion during Easter Week 1916 who described in his 1948 Bureau Statement how he fought at the nearby Lansdowne Road. According to him, Clanwilliam House was burning at 8:00 in the evening. Seamus Kavanagh, another Irish volunteer who was stationed at Roberts’ Builders Yard, described in his 1949 Bureau Statement that Clanwilliam House was ‘engulfed in flames’ by 8:30 pm. These accounts pinpointing the fall of Clanwilliam House at around 8:00 in the evening contradict Grace’s account of 25 Northumberland Road falling at around 10:00 pm. Considering that 25 Northumberland Road was the first building to fall and Clanwilliam House the last, Grace’s estimate is likely too late.
(MAI, BMH WS 310; 1/7th, 2/7th, 3/7th Sherwood Foresters; MAI, BMH WS 157; MAI, BMH WS 208; Hughes et al., 2017)