Four Courts - Destruction in Civil War

Destruction in Civil War

The Four Courts were seized by Commandant Ned Daly's 1st Battalion during the Easter Rising in 1916. They survived the bombardment by British artillery that destroyed large parts of the city centre.

On 14 April 1922 they were occupied by Republican forces led by Rory O'Connor who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. After several months of a stand-off, the new Provisional Government attacked the building to dislodge the rebels, on the advice of the Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Army, Michael Collins. This provoked a week of fighting in Dublin. In the process of the bombardment the historic building was destroyed. Most dramatically however, when the anti-Treaty contingent were surrendering, the west wing of the building was obliterated in a huge explosion, destroying the Irish Public Record Office which was located at the rear of the building. It has been alleged that the Republicans deliberately booby-trapped its priceless Irish archives, which were stored in the basement of the Four Courts. Nearly one thousand years of irreplaceable archives were destroyed by this act. However, the insurgents, who included future Taoiseach Seán Lemass, denied this accusation and argued that while they had used the archive as a store of their ammunition, they had not deliberately mined it. They suggest that the explosion was caused by the accidental detonation of their ammunition store during the fighting.