Forgotten fatality of the Rising … Naas officer killed on Easter Monday
Liam Kenny
A Naas man who had survived battle in South Africa and in Flanders was killed in the opening hours of the fighting on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916. And yet the fatality in question is hardly known in the town where he lived and where his father was at the centre of commercial life for over thirty years. The answer to this lack of awareness might be that Alfred Ernest Warmington was fighting not as an Irish Volunteer but as an officer of the British Army.
Alfred Ernest was the only son of the long-serving bank manager – also Alfred Warmington – of the Munster & Leinster Bank (now the Allied Irish Bank) in Naas. Alfred Ernest had lived in the Bank House with his parents for some time. Although not born in the town he was resident there with his parents at the time of the 1911 Census.
His father had moved to different parts of Ireland in his career as a bank official. He had worked in Cork, Kerry and Queen’s County (Laois) in the 1870/80s. It was in the latter that Alfred Ernest was born in the early 1870s. The family moved to Naas when his father became Manager of the Munster & Leinster bank in South Main Street in 1885.
Alfred Ernest was in his late teens when he left Ireland to seek his fortune in South Africa. He arrived as the tensions were building between the Dutch settlers (Boers) in South Africa and the British colonial administration. Young Warmington got into the fray immediately and in 1895 joined the Cape Mounted Rifles. When the tensions boiled over into all-out war in 1899 Warmington transferred to Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, a militia brigade which was in the front line as the British attempted to dislodge the Boers.
Thorneycroft’s Infantry was involved in a mountain assault at the hill known as Spion Kop in January 1900. Like the other battles in the early months of the Boer War it turned into a humiliating defeat for the British and Warmington was fortunate to survive the withering fire poured down by the canny Boers. Nonetheless his services here and at the relief of Ladysmith earned him King’s and Queen’s medals. His experience of war did not put him off South Africa and when the fighting stopped he enlisted in the Cape Police force in 1902.
However some time after that he returned to Ireland and the census of 1911 records him as living with his parents in the Munster & Leinster Bank House in South Main Street.
His occupation at this time is uncertain but a strong clue is evident from a plaque at Heuston Station (formerly King’s Bridge) which lists him as one of the employees of the Great Southern & Western Railway Company who died in the period 1914-18. The plaque ostensibly commemorates those employees who died in the First World War battles and does not distinguish the fact that Alfred Warmington lost his life on home ground in the Rising.
When war drums again sounded in 1914 Warmington returned to the colours and, no doubt, based on his distinguished service in South Africa was given an officer rank as a Captain in the Royal Irish Regiment. He most likely saw some fighting as the initial fluid phase of the war gave way to the stalemate in the trenches. He was posted back to Ireland in early 1916 and was stationed at Richmond Barracks at Inchicore.
After the heat and dirty fighting of the Boer War and the mud and carnage of 1914/15, Alfred Warmington must surely have felt safe back in the capital city of his own country. However having survived two wars his luck was about to run out.
Close to noon on Easter Monday, 1916, a battalion of Irish Volunteers occupied the South Dublin Union (now the area of St. James’ Hospital) in parallel with the takeover of the GPO. The volunteers were under the command of Eamon Ceannt and W. T. Cosgrave.
The British troops in Richmond Barracks were on band parade that morning – the volunteers could hear the music from their positions in the South Dublin Union. Suddenly the music stopped. A message had been sent from British officials in Dublin Castle to say that the volunteers had taken over key positions in the city and reinforcements were needed.
A party from the Royal Irish Regiment set off from Richmond Barrack’s along James Street on the way to tackle the rebels in the city centre. But they were stopped in their tracks by fire from Ceannt’s men in position behind the high walls of the South Dublin Union. The Royal Irish commander, Lieut.-Colonel Owens decided to try and take the Union from another direction. He instructed Warmington to take a company around to the back gate of Union at the Rialto end of the boundary wall. First through the gate was a Lieut. Ramsay (also Irish born) who was shot dead by Volunteers who had taken up position inside the gate. Warmington, most likely enraged by the death of his officer comrade, then rashly attempted to burst through but he met the same fate and was shot down.
Word of his death filtered back to his parents in the Munster & Leinster Bank house in South Main Street, Naas, where it no doubt caused great grief to his parents and sisters. And despite the shift in public opinion in support of the rebels there was still sympathy among the wider population for the Warmington family. At its meeting the following month the Naas Board of Guardians (local council) passed a vote of “deep sympathy” to the Warmington family. One of its members Mr. Gogarty summed up the irony of Warmington’s death when he said that it was “regrettable that having gone through the South African campaign he should meet his death in his own country.”
Alfred Ernest Warmington, soldier and Naas resident, lies at rest beneath a simple stone cross in British military cemetery Grangegorman on Dublin’s northside, a long forgotten casualty of the fierce fighting of Easter Monday, 24 April 1916. Series no: 328.
Alfred Ernest Warmington, A Naas man who had survived battle in South Africa and in Flanders, was killed in the opening hours of the fighting on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916.Our thanks to Liam Kenny
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