Bridge to be named after James McCormack, killed in 1916 Rising

James McCormack, an Irish Citizen Army soldier from Lisdornan was killed at Moore Lane beside the GPO in Easter Week 1916. To commemorate this event, Bellewstown Heritage Group is naming the bridge at Dardistown over the M1 the James McCormack Memorial Bridge. The ceremony takes place at the bridge on Tuesday 26th April at 11 am.

It will be attended by chairman of Meath County Council, Cllr Brian Fitzgerald as well as local Meath County Councillors from the Laytown/Bettystown area. The memorial event has been made possible by a generous grant from Meath Co Council. It is hoped that the Mayors of Drogheda and Fingal will also attend. Up to a hundred members of the extended McCormack family are expected to travel to the event which is being organised by Bellewstown Heritage Group. A number of local history groups, neighbours and friends of the McCormacks as well as groups of children from the local schools will also be present to pay tribute to this local hero who was killed exactly 100 years ago on the 26th April 1916.

Local historian Brendan Matthews will speak about the life and times of James McCormack who lived in the Lisdornan area until his mid-twenties before moving to work in Baldoyle. Personnel from the Organisation of National Ex-Servicemen will be on hand to salute the national flag while various members of the McCormack family will read prayers and the Proclamation.

James McCormack

James McCormack was born in 1877 and grew up with his younger brothers Hugh, John and Michael and sister Margaret in Lisdornan, near Julianstown, Stamullen and Bellewstown. He was an agricultural labourer who possibly worked on Bellewstown Racecourse before moving to Baldoyle around 1906 to take up a job with the Baldoyle Racecourse Company. Baldoyle races were extremely successful at that time, people could take a train out from the city centre and walk down from Sutton station to enjoy an afternoon at the course. McCormack cut the grass on the race-course, painted fences, constructed jumps and carried out general maintenance around the course. He was also involved in laying out the new five-furlong gallop on the course from Maynetown to the Grandstand. He married a local Baldoyle girl, Annie Rooney, in 1908 and they moved into one of the newly-constructed cottages along the Strand Rd, Baldoyle with beautiful sea-views overlooking Howth and Ireland’s Eye. By 1916 the young couple had three boys, Michael (6), Joseph (4) and James (2).

James McCormack, who probably was a member of the ITGWU which had been formed in 1909, got involved in the great Lockout of 1913 and joined the part-time Irish Citizen Army which was formed to protect the workers from police brutality during the strikers’ protest marches. At this time the members of the ICA were mainly armed with bats, hurleys and sticks. But after the strike was settled, the army was re-formed by James Connolly into a more radical and more militant force. James McCormack remained in the army and was joined by his two brothers-in-law, Lar and James Rooney, in the 14-strong Baldoyle unit. The men learned how to handle weapons and trained in military manoeuvres during evenings and weekends on Baldoyle Racecourse.

On the Monday of Easter Week, McCormack reported to Liberty Hall and was assigned to the GPO where he fought alongside James Connolly. On Wednesday the 26th April 1916 he was spotted by a British army sniper in Moore Lane at the back of the GPO and was shot through the head, dying instantly. His young widow and his three sons suffered many hardships in the following years until eventually she succeeded in getting a state pension and education costs for her sons in 1924. The broken-hearted Annie McCormack died only four years later in 1928 at the age of 45.

Interestingly in 2014 Bellewstown Heritage Group carried out huge research into men from the Bellewstown area who had joined the British army and fought in the First World War. Paul Black, whose father Patrick and Uncle Dan Black both fought in the war, and historian Fiona Ahern uncovered the forgotten stories of almost forty men from the wider Bellewstown community who were all British army volunteers. Their book, Bellewstown’s Forgotten Heroes, tells the stories of each of these men, many of them ordinary agricultural workers who had joined the Bellewstown branch of Redmond’s hugely popular Volunteer movement in May 1914 and followed his call to join the British army later that year. James McCormack of course took a different route as he had left the area around 1906.