Sean O'Hegarty, O/C of the First Cork Brigade, was born at 26 Evergreen Street on March 21st 1881. General Tom Barry described him as: "responsible more than any other individual for the aggressive and militant activities which placed Cork No.1 Brigade amongst the leading Brigades in Ireland."
Sean was born into a family of freedom fighters. His father John was a Fenian, his brother Patrick Sarsfield was an IRB man and his other brother Ned was an engineer of the First Cork Brigade. When Sean's father died from consumption on Christmas day 1888 the family were plunged into poverty but, the matriarch of the family, Katherine, pawned her jewellery and worked scrubbing floors in big houses to make sure her children received an education and a decent living. This determination would shine through in Sean during the testing years of revolution.
Sean O'Hegarty in later years.
Sean went to school at the North Mon and after his school days he got a job in Cork Post Office. In 1905 he joined the Celtic Literary Society, a nationalist society founded by Terence MacSwiney, and a year later he joined the IRB.
In 1907 he co-founded the O'Growney Branch of the Gaelic League and in 1910 was chairman of Cork Sinn Fein. In February 1912 Sean married fellow Gaelic Leaguer and Republican activist Maghdalen Ni Laoghaire. In 1916 Sean was Commandant of the Irish Volunteers in Ballingeary and Bandon and had gathered his men for action but, of course the rising in the rebel county was aborted at the last minute. Of course, with all this activity under his belt, Sean was a marked man in the eyes of the occupier and he lost his job at the post office when he was ordered by the authorities to leave Cork.
Sean's banishment would not last long and he was back in the rebel county in 1917 where he got employment as a storekeeper at Cork Workhouse. On Armistice Day 1918 he organised the successful rescue of Donnchadha MacNeilus from Cork County Gaol. MacNeilus was a Donegal man but a member of the Cork Volunteers who found himself facing the gallows after shooting a constable during a raid on his lodgings on Leitrim Street. The constable was lingering for days in hospital with a gunshot wound to his face but, Sean wasn't taking any chances, if the constable died MacNeilus was sure to hang, so he organised the breakout of the Donegal man from Cork Gaol. In the end, the constable survived!
Cork Workhouse.
In the months leading up to the War of Independence Sean was leading a vast arms collecting campaign. By 1920 he had become O/C of the First Cork Brigade, he enforced a high degree of discipline in his men which marked out the Cork Brigade as one of the most feared and respected in the land. In August 1920 Sean was one of many high ranking Republican figures arrested in Cork City Hall, along with Liam Lynch and Lord Mayor MacSwiney. Sean and Lynch gave false names and adresses and were later released. If only the Brits knew who they had let slip through their net! Unfortunately for MacSwiney he was too well known and he was sent to Brixton Prison where he would die on hunger strike.
On the 25th of February 1921 Sean led a Flying Column consisting of 60 freedom fighters to a mountainy spot on the Cork - Killarney road. What played out would go down in local lore as The Battle of Coolavokig.
The battle site at Coolavokig, or as it is also known as Coolnacaheragh.
Sean led his men in ambushing 8 lorry loads of enemy soldiers. The 8 lorries consisted of 100 soldiers but with leadership and displine, the 60 volunteers of the IRA Flying Column put up a fight which lasted almost 4 hours.
It wasn't an easy fight, the British soldiers carried with them civilians, what we would term today as human shields, but none were casualties that day and in fact the IRA counted no casualties on their side but many on the enemy side. When 40 British lorries were spotted coming over the horizon Sean called a halt to the hours long battle and retreated his men.
The monument many of us pass on the way to or from Kerry, marking the spot of the ambush.
Sean at Coolavokig ambush site, July 1962.
As O/C of the First Cork Brigade Sean oversaw the rooting out of informers. Like many a lost rebellion that had passed before, informers had been the foundation of such failures, so when the Cork IRA set out to win the war for freedom they did so with the determination to overcome that most Irish of downfalls - the informer.
After the truce an uneasy relationship developed between Sean and somecif his comrades. He knew peace would not last, that the IRA would need to be ready for a resumption of war and in March he oversaw the arms raid on the British ship the Upnor at Cork harbour.
In May 1922 Sean addressed the Dail on unity within the Republican movement. By then he had seen a viscious split tearing republicans apart and he tried to repair it but, when Civil War broke out he took neither side. Sean, along with his Cork brigade comrade Florrie O'Donoghue founded the Neutral IRA.
Grave of Florrie O'Donoghue, St Finbarrs Cemetery.
Bust of Sean at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork city.
In the 1930s Sean began a campaign to have excommunication orders against IRA members lifted. In 1954 he chaired the committee to repatriate the remains of Fr Dominic O'Connor OFM Cap and Fr Albert Biddy OFM Cap. The two priests were more or less the Chaplin's of the Republican Army who had died in exile. Fr Albert died in 1925 and Fr Dominic died in 1935 but thanks to the stewardship of Sean O'Hegarty the two patriot priests were finally brought home to rest in their native soil in the summer of 1958.
Fr Albert & Fr Dominic.
In 1960 Sean chaired another committee, this time it was one to raise a memorial at the Republican Plot in St Finbarrs Cemetery. Three years later on St Patrick's day 1963, the tall stone monument was unveiled by Eamon de Valera in the cemetery.
The memorial at St Finbarrs Cemetery.
Just months after the memorial was unveiled at St Finbarrs Cemetery Sean would depart this world. The O/C of the First Cork Brigade drew his last breath at the Bon Secour Hospital in Cork on May 31st 1963. His remains were brought to Kilmurry Cemetery where he was laid to rest alongside his wife, with full military honours.
Plaque at the gates of the historic Kilmurry Graveyard & the O'Hegarty gravestone.
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