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FERMOY GARRISON - FIRST PHASE

Anderson gave forty acres rent free on which the barracks of Fermoy and Buttevant were built. He secured for this town not one but two large barracks, notwithstanding that 'Sir Denham Jephson-Norreys used all his influence in vain to get Mallow rather than Fermoy made into a big military centre for the south of Ireland.'

The East Barracks,covering 16.5 acres and costing £50,000, were completed in 1806, and in 1808 a barrack master was appointed by the Barrack Board and the Board of Works. One of the seven commissioners who made up this joint body was responsible for the military quarters, he was assisted by a numerous staff including two inspectors - general of barracks and seventy six barrack masters. His department was transferred to the Ordnance departmentof the army in 1822.

The new barrack master of Fermoy was Captain John Fitch O Flanagan, a descendant of that Colonel James O Flanagan, who commanded Dillon's regiment at Fontenoy.

Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley,Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1806 to 1808 was in June of that year given command of a force of 9,000 men assembled at Cork. On 12 July he sailed from the Cove to land at Modego Bay in Portugal, all disembarked by 5 August.

Captain O Flanagan's son, James Roderick O Flanagan, records that 'when Sir Arthur Wellesley was about taking the command of the troops then to drive Bonaparte from the Peninsula, he visited Fermoy to ascertain if it was the most convenient place to station troops, when required to recruit or strenghthen the army he (Sir Arthur Wellesley) was to command. Of course my father, as barrack master of Fermoy was the most competent officer to give the commander-in-chief the necessary information. He had a long interveiw with Sir Arthur, and the result was selecting Fermoy as most convenient to the Cove of Cork; and it was from Fermoy the troops went that fought and gained the victory at Waterloo'.

The West or New Barracks, which included a small hospital, was completed in 1809. A general military hospital was later built on the east side of the Dublin road.

The General Military Hospital


Charge of the new barracks was given to Captain Courtney, who held the post until 1820, when Captain O Flanagan took over this also, and moved in to the Barrack House, north of the officers quarters, occupying it until his death in 1848. (A German regiment, the Brunswick Infantry Regiment 92 were stationed in Fermoy in 1810.)

By 1813 numbers were down to 35,000 of whom only 11,000 were regulars. By the end of 1816 the last Irish unit had been sent home. In that year the army both in Britain and Ireland was spilt up into small detachments. In Ireland alone there were as many as four hundred and forty military stations for twenty four thousand troops.

After the war was over the two barracks were rarely occupied to any great extent; the number in residence from then on was more or less, according as the government viewed the local requirements for troops in aid of the civil power or the scope here for the training of units for foreign service.