View from the Green Room: Magnificent Marchant
The Pickardstown Ambush cast with, second from left, David Marchant, at the Tramore Coastguard Cultural Centre.
It’s a story that’s etched in the folk history of Tramore. The planned ambush of the RIC Barracks in Queen Street that led to death and destruction.
The current owners of the property, which was then reduced to a burnt out shell, were seated beside me at the performance.
The ambush was conceived by Paddy Paul, the leader of the IRA East Waterford Brigade, who gathered Volunteers from the local Dunhill and Waterford City units of his command, as well as the West Waterford flying column led by George Lennon. This made for a total of 50 men, although several were armed only with shotguns.
An attack was made on the RIC barracks in Queen Street, Tramore, which lured reinforcements from the British military garrison in Waterford City. Four Crossley Tenders were quickly dispatched with 40 troops on board.
However, the ambush had been badly planned with the result that the British troops were able to make a determined counterattack, ultimately killing two IRA men - Michael McGrath (the first Waterford City Volunteer killed in the Irish War of Independence, after whom Tramore GAA Club is named – Cumann LCG Mícheál Mac Craith). Dunhill’s Thomas O'Brien was also killed and two more were wounded. One British soldier and one Black and Tan were the only British casualties.
The entire story of the battle and its aftermath was told by young Tramore actor David Marchant in as compelling a performance as I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing. A tour-de-force one-man performance of over an hour that carried us through laneways, country roads, safe houses and terrified house owners – the Black and Tans would have beaten up any householder involved and broken every stick of furniture in the house.
Eventually, Nicky Whittle, who had been shot twice, was spirited into St Otteran’s Mental Hospital where he received some treatment.
The Black and Tans got wind of the fact that Nicky Whittle (whose son Connie worked with me in Tramore CBS) was sheltering in a Waterford Hospital and ransacked Waterford Infirmary, St Patrick’s Hospital and then St. Otteran’s where they terrified staff and patients. Whittle, by now, was in Dunmore East and then rowed across the Estuary to South Kilkenny before, eventually, making it across to Liverpool.
Whittle’s home was raided and his mother threatened who maintained that he was dead and buried but did not know where. The Tans dug up all the fresh graves in Dunhill cemetery and never gave up on their fruitless search.
Young actor David Marchant acted out all the various elements of this episode. He brought us through fields, laneways, Tramore railway bridges, hospitals and safe houses in a performance for the ages.
Mark Waters introduced the piece with the ballad ‘Only our rivers run free’ and Garret Wyse read the Proclamation as Pádraig Pearse. Gerry Whelan composed and sang his own fact-filled ballad ‘The Shrine’ and Kevin O’Donoghue also penned an original and sensitive ballad ‘The Pickardstown Ambush’ and his rich tenor voice sang us out.
Well done to Stagemad and a big shout out to Director James Power for his sensitive and clever staging of his adaptation of Nicky Whittle’s own witness testimony of the ambush.
An instant and lengthy standing ovation with handshakes to all involved from the Tramore Coastguard audience.
