Soloheadbeg

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Soloheadbeg is a small townland, some two miles outside Tipperary Town, near Limerick Junction railway station. The place is steeped in Irish history, for it was here that King Mahon of Thomond and his brother Brian Ború defeated the vikings at the Battle of Solohead in 968. It was also a stopping point by Dónal Cam O'Sullivan Bere, during his epic march from Dunboy castle in west Cork to O'Rourke's Castle in Leitrim in 1603.

Its later claim to fame is for an incident which occurred on 21 January 1919. Irish Republican Army (IRA) men Seán Treacy, Dan Breen, Seán Hogan, Séamus Robinson, Tadhg Crowe, Mick McCormack, Paddy O'Dwyer, Michael Ryan and Seán O'Meara attacked two Royal Irish Constables, Patrick McDonnell and James O'Connell, who were guarding two workmen transporting explosive gelignite to a nearby quarry.

The two local constables were killed immediately for not surrendering to their attackers; the two workmen survived. The gelignite was seized by the IRA, but there are no records of any large explosions around that time. Dan Breen claimed the constables attacked first, but a body of opinion says that this was unlikely given the odds against them. Hogan and Treacy were killed by the British during the course of the Irish War of Independence and Breen went on to serve as a constitutional politician and member of Dáil Éireann until 1965.

This was the first use of physical force by the IRA acting on its own separate authority following the unilateral establishment of an Irish Parliament or First Dáil in Dublin after the 1918 elections, which Sinn Féin won. The fact that the Soloheadbeg incident occurred on the day that the First Dáil was meeting at the Mansion House was an unfortunate coincidence. The Sinn Fein Dáil was not consulted, nor was it involved in the attack.^{[citation needed]}.