Crois an Bharraigh · Co. Cork
A West Cork crossroads where about 100 of Tom Barry's flying column broke through a 1,200-strong British encirclement in March 1921 - the textbook escape of the War of Independence.
Crossbarry is a crossroads in Innishannon parish, about 20km southwest of Cork city. The River Owenabue runs through it, the R589 runs across it, and there is a pub, a shop and a scatter of houses. On an ordinary day nothing much happens here. But on the 19th of March 1921, for the best part of an hour, this was the most important corner in Ireland.
Tom Barry's Cork No. 3 Brigade flying column - 104 men, most of them young, most of them local - had been hitting the British for months with speed and surprise. The British set a trap: a coordinated encirclement of the Crossbarry crossroads with something like 1,200 troops drawn from the Essex Regiment, the RIC, and the Auxiliaries out of Macroom. Barry got his men into position before dawn. When the first British lorries came into view at eight in the morning, his column hit them with crossfire from a few yards.
Inside an hour, ten British soldiers and three of Barry's volunteers were dead, and the column had fought its way clear and marched off toward Gurranereigh while the British were still untangling themselves. The escape from near-encirclement against odds of better than ten to one is the reason Crossbarry is still studied. It is taught as a masterclass in breaking a cordon under fire.
There is a cost written into the morning that the headline numbers miss. Charlie Hurley, the brigade commander, was killed nearby at about half six that same morning - trapped in a house at Forde's of Ballymurphy while still recovering from a wound he had taken at the Upton ambush a few weeks before. The memorial at the crossroads carries all of it. Read the plaque, stand at the junction, and the rest of the village is honest about being a village. There is nowhere to stay and one place for a pint. Bandon and Kinsale are the towns nearby.
