Sieges Without Guns

The final talk in the Ormond Historical Society’s 2025-‘26 series of lectures takes place on Monday, March 9, next at the Abbey Court Hotel at the usual starting time of 8pm.

The talk is titled, ‘Sieges Without Guns: The Midlands, 1641 to 1642’. The speaker is Dr Pádraig Lenihan, an acknowledged authority on 17th Century warfare. He has written several well-received books and articles on Irish and European warfare in the period 1641–1748 and brings both a practical and academic perspective to the subject.

He served as an officer in the Irish Defence Forces for 14 years before becoming a lecturer in history at University College Galway.

Among his most notable publications are: Confederate Catholics at War, 1641-1643; 1690 Battle of the Boyne; Raw Generals and Green Soldiers: Catholic Armies in Ireland, 1641-1643 and Siege in Ireland, 1641-53, which he published last year.

Pádraig Lenihan’s talk to the Society will use eyewitness accounts from the 1641 Depositions to convey what it must have been like for English settlers and soldiers blockaded by Irish insurgents in the many strongholds dotted across Laois, Offaly, Limerick and North Tipperary during the first winter of the Confederate and Cromwellian Wars (1641-53). Among those attacked, driven out and in some cases killed by the local Irish were the English mining families settled at the Silvermines. Their depositions of what had occurred – of which there are many – make interesting if sometimes gruesome reading.

All are invited to join us at the Abbey Court Hotel on Monday, March 9, next at 8pm for Dr Lenihan’s interesting talk.