
Stephen Heffernan
In person and online Zoom lecture
(following MHSI AGM at 7.00pm)
Much debate has been prompted in recent years regarding the decline of the non-Catholic population between 1911 and 1926 in what became the Irish Free State, with David Fitzpatrick’s work on the Methodists having come in for particular attention. This lecture considers the experiences of a family that illustrates the difficulty of taking a strictly denominational look at such matters. The Woods moved easily between Methodism, Presbyterianism and the Church of Ireland. The lecture will follow the family from their arrival in the Lismore district in the aftermath of a boycotting campaign in Kerry during the Land War up to the sale of the last farm held by the Woods in the area in the 1930s and to place them in the wider context of boycotts, cattle runs and killings of ‘emergency men’ that happened during the revolutionary years.
Stephen Heffernan is a graduate of University College Dublin (B.A. German and History) and the University of Galway (M.G.O.). A native of Newcastle on the Tipperary-Waterford border, he teaches at Coláiste Chilliain in Clondalkin.