About the ‘Stories of the Revolution’ Project

The Stories of the Revolution project invited West Cork children to record oral history from their families and the older community about the 1916-23 revolutionary period in their home countries, and to submit these stories in essay form.

The project was instigated and managed by the Skibbereen Heritage Centre team, kindly enabled by the Cork County Council Centenary programme, and it operated from 2017-2020 inclusive.

Over these four years, the project team visited 48 schools in the greater Skibbereen, Clonakilty, Bandon and Dunmanway districts, with 823 West Cork children submitting just short of 800 essays, some containing multiple stories.

Thanks to the ongoing support of Cork County Council, the entire collection of essays can now be browsed and searched HERE.
The original hard copies of the projects also form a ‘Stories of the Revolution’ archive at the Cork City and County Archives Institute where they will be preserved for posterity.

Highlights from some of the essays are also included in the ‘Stories of the Revolution’ book by Terri Kearney and Margaret Murphy, available to purchase online HERE

We would like to thank all of teachers and staff at the participating schools alongside the students and their interviewees for embracing this project so wholeheartedly.

And we would also like to sincerely thank Cork County Council for enabling this worthwhile project.

We hope that you will enjoy reading these wonderful stories half as much as we enjoyed the process of collecting them!

The archive and research material made available on this website can be used provided that the source is acknowledged.

This publication has been supported by Cork County Council through its Commemorations Committee and through the support of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.