23 North Main Street

Terence James MacSwiney was born at No. 23 North Main Street on the 28th of March 1879. The fourth of 8 children born to John MacSwiney and Mary Wilkinson. 

John MacSwiney was a teacher in London when he met and married Mary Wilkinson. He had a rebellious streak and she was a devout Catholic, these attributes would be passed onto their offspring. 

The MacSwiney Family.

John went to Italy to defend Rome from Garibaldi and after these exploits he went back to his native Cork with his wife Mary and family where he set up a tabbacco factory and settled at 23 North Main Street where Terence was born in the four story town house. 

John's factory was a short lived venture and after it went bust he went to Australia, leaving Mary and the children behind in Cork. The patriarch of the MacSwiney family never returned to Leeside, he died down under in 1895.

News report from Australia in 1932 about the commemoration held at the grave of John McSwiney.

Wedding of Terence MacSwiney and Muriel Murphy in 1917.

Young Terence was educated at North Mon but left at the age of 15 to financially support his mother and siblings. He was employed at Dwyer & Co but continued his education with night classes, later enrolling at UCC and graduated with a degree in Moral Science in 1907.

Mural near North Main Street.

A lover of literature, Terence wrote pamphlets and plays. He co founded the Celtic Literary Society and the Cork Dramatic Society. This romantic rebel was also a serious revolutionary, helping to establish the Cork branch of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. 

The MacSwiney clan lived at 4 Grand View Tce on Victoria Road in 1916. Terence was arrested from here following the Easter Rising. 

He was interned in Bromyard Internment Camp in Britain in 1917 when he married Muriel Murphy, a daughter of the famous Murphy's Stout brewing family. 

Mural on Grattan Street Cork City of Mr & Mrs MacSwiney

The newly weds lived at 5 Eldred Tce, on the front Douglas Road in 1917.

In 1918 he was elected Sinn Fein MP for Cork and following the murder of Lord Mayor Tomas MacCurtain in 1920 he took up his chain of office. 

Terence and Muriel with their daughter Marie in 1919.

His time as Cork Lord Mayor was cut short in August 1920 when British troops raided the city hall and arrested him there. At his trial that September he was found guilty and declared after the verdict "I shall be free alive or dead within a month."

Terence MacSwiney died on day 74 of his hunger strike in Brixton Prison on the 25th of October 1920.

The remains of the martyred Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney being carried from Cork City Hall by his brothers Peter and Sean. 

MacSwiney's grave at Cork's Republican Plot in St. Finbarrs Cemetery.