Remembering Foynes’ Mary Spring Rice on the 100th anniversary of her death

IN a quiet graveyard along the N69 between Loughill and Foynes, there is a ruined bell tower and a handful of gravestones. Among those interred there is Mary Spring Rice. A memorial stone adorns the gate leading into the small cemetery which highlights her involvement in the Howth Gun Running.
On December 5, 2024, it will be exactly 100 years since Mary Spring Rice was laid to rest in the protestant graveyard of Mount Trenchard. She had died in Clwdyy, Wales in a sanatorium, after a battle with tuberculosis. This illness she had been fighting during most of the Irish War of Independence and Civil War. Her body was brought home by boat to Dublin and then by train as far as Foynes. On December 4 her coffin was draped with an Irish tricolour and escorted by local republicans, Gaeilgeoirs and trade unionists to her home in Mount Trenchard on the banks of the Shannon outside Foynes. She was buried the next day.
The variety and scope of individuals who gathered to celebrate her life is worth noting and reflects a vibrant and passionate life lived. She is most commonly remembered as a small part of the Howth Gun Run but she was much more substantial than that and was an impressive and determined individual with a rare insight into the world at the time.
The Howth gun running is an incredibly important event and one of the first moments of the Irish revolutionary period. She was involved in the plan’s formation and its execution, letters she wrote still exist and can be found in the archive of University College Dublin and they offer an incredible insight into the planning and organisation of this important, first move on the board in the Irish push for independence. Letters have been found and documented between her, The O’Rahilly and Erskine Childers about organising meetings in Dublin and London as well as raising the funds to buy arms for the Irish volunteers. Spring Rice even offered her own small boat, The Santa Cruz, as an initial vessel to transport the arms if nothing else could be found. She travelled in the now famous boat, The Asgard, with Erskine Childers, his wife Molly and two fishermen from Donegal to gather arms from Germany and deliver them to Howth to a group of men, ready to disperse and hide these weapons, many of which would be used in the 1916 rising. Her diary of these few weeks sailing around the coast of England and trying to avoid dangerous seas and British navy patrols as they snuck weapons into Ireland are incredible to read and are still available online after being published for the first time in the 1960s.

READ MORE: Heart of the community: Croom's century of care
During the War of Independence she aided the local IRA unit, the West Limerick Brigade. The house, Mount Trenchard, was used as a safe house by men on the run and her boat was used to transport men and guns across the Shannon to Clare. She was involved in first aid training and instrumental locally in the creation of Cumann na mBan branches. During the Civil War she offered aid to any who were injured as the Free State Army pushed through County Limerick towards Cork and Kerry. More of her letters and personal accounts discuss her internal conflict with the Civil War. She was politically against the Treaty but hated the idea of civil war. In the end she sided with the anti-treaty IRA but was always hesitant about armed insurrection against other Irish.
Her position as a wealthy Protestant offered her a degree of freedom and scope. She was generally above suspicion from the local authorities. She also often invited liberal members of the British parliament to her home in an effort to win them to the cause of Irish freedom. The famous playwright Lennox Robinson wrote a play based on her life called The Big House in 1926.
She was instrumental, with her cousin, in establishing an Irish College in Clare in 1912. She worked hard to improve the Irish language and held many meetings and lessons in her home and across the county. The Irish college in Clare founded near Carrigaholt was named Colaiste Ui Comhrai. It was one of several valiant efforts she made to help maintain the strength of the Irish language. Accounts written by Douglas Hyde let us know that he visited the house several times and met Mary for the first time when she was 15. He remembered locals speaking Irish and after meeting Hyde, Spring Rice too dedicated herself to the language. A few days after her death the Irish newspaper, Fainne an Lae, commented on her death saying “Gael go smior a bhí inti ina cheann sin....”, translated roughly into she was a Gael to the core.
Not only was Mary important in Irish language and nationalist circles but she was also a driving force behind many small industries and the improvement of rural life. Her father, Baron Monteagle, along with Horace Plunket set up the first Co-operatives in the country at Mount Trenchard House in 1889. This would be the first of a massive movement that aimed to help improve the lives of many rural farmers and workers. This idea of farmers helping each other and benefiting from it was new and exciting and Mary was also inspired by it. She worked with the Irish Countrywomen’s Association and other groups to help future Irish industry and create means of employment and prosperity for many.
Her funeral in Foynes was attended by a wide variety of individuals from members of the co-op and ITGWU members, to IRA men and members of the Gaelic League. Her strength of character and drive were main components of her personality and the fierce conviction she lived her life with was testified by the varied attendants at her funeral.
100 years has passed since the coffin was laid to rest in the small graveyard by the side of the road but the memory of this remarkable woman still deserves to be honoured.