19/01/2026
Some Sneem history for you.
https://www.facebook.com/share/1GqFV3rfTb/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Gobnait Ní Bhruadair was born the Hon. Albinia Lucy Brodrick on December 17th 1861, at 23 Chester Square, Belgrave, London, the fifth daughter of William Brodrick, 8th Viscount Midleton (1830–1907), and his wife, Augusta Mary (née Freemantle), daughter of the 1st Baron Cottesloe.
Ní Bhruadair spent her early childhood in London until the family moved to their country estate in Peper Harow, Surrey, in 1870. Educated privately, she travelled extensively across the continent and spoke fluent German, Italian and French, and had a reading knowledge of Latin.
Ní Bhruadair's family was an English Protestant aristocratic one that had been at the forefront of British colonial rule in Ireland since the 17th century. In the early twentieth century, it included leaders of the Unionist campaign against Irish Home Rule.
Ní Bhruadair's brother, St John Brodrick, 1st Earl of Midleton, had been the nominal leader of the Irish Unionist Alliance from 1910 until 1918, when he and other Unionists outside Ulster established the Irish Unionist Anti-Partition League.
The early Albinia Lucy Brodrick conformed to her familial political views on Ireland. However, by the start of the twentieth century, she had become a regular visitor to her father's estate in County Cork.
There, she began to educate herself about Ireland and began to reject the views about Ireland that she had been raised on. In 1902, she wrote about the need to develop the Irish industry and around the same time, she began to develop an interest in the Gaelic Revival. She began to pay regular visits to the Gaeltacht, where she became fluent in Irish and was horrified at the abject poverty of the people.
From this point on, her affinity with Ireland and Irish culture grew intensely. Upon her father's death in 1907, she became financially independent and, in 1908, bought a home near West Cove, Caherdaniel, County Kerry.
The same year, she established an agricultural cooperative there to develop local industry. She organised classes educating people on diet, encouraged vegetarianism and, during the smallpox epidemic of 1910, nursed the local people. Determined to establish a hospital for local poor people, she travelled to the United States to raise funds.
There she took the opportunity to study American nursing, met leading Irish-Americans and became more politicised to Ireland's cause. Upon her return to Kerry, she established a hospital in Caherdaniel in 1910. She renamed the area Ballincoona (Baile an Chúnaimh, 'the home of help'), but it was unsuccessful and eventually closed for lack of money.
Ní Bhruadair wrote on health matters for The Englishwoman and Fortnightly, among other journals, was a member of the council of the National Council of Trained Nurses and gave evidence to the royal commission on venereal disease in 1914.
Ní Bhruadair joined Cumann na mBan. She visited some of the 1,800 Irish republican internees held by the British in the Frongoch internment camp in Wales and wrote to the newspapers with practical advice for intending visitors.
Ní Bhruadair During the war of independence she sheltered IRA volunteers and, consequently, her home became the target for Black and Tan attacks.
Along with Dr Kathleen Lynn, she worked with the Irish White Cross to distribute food to the dependents of IRA volunteers. By the end of the Tan War, she had become hardened by the suffering she had seen and was by now implacably opposed to British rule in Ireland.
Ní Bhruadair took the Republican side during the Civil War and was a formidable public speaker at mass meetings against the treaty in Kerry. In April 1923, she was shot by Free State troops, arrested and subsequently imprisoned in the North Dublin Union, where she followed the example of other Irish Republicans and went on a hunger strike. She was released two weeks later.
Following the formation of Fianna Fáil by Éamon de Valera in 1926, Ní Bhruadair continued to support Sinn Féin, which would not take its seats in a partitionist parliament. In October 1926, she represented Munster at the party's Ardfheis.
Ní Bhruadair owned the party's semi-official media organ, called Irish Freedom, from 1926 to 37, where she frequently contributed articles and, in her later years, acted as editor. Her home became the target of the Free State government forces in 1929 following an upsurge in violence from anti-Treaty Republicans against the government.
Probably the only mark against her was when she left Cumann na mBan with Mary MacSwiney following the decision by its members at their 1933 convention to pursue social radicalism. The two then established a right-wing, nationalist movement named Mná na Poblachta, which failed to attract many new members.
Gobnait Ní Bhruadair died on January 16th 1955, and was buried in the Church of Ireland graveyard in Sneem, County Kerry. In her will, she left most of her wealth (£17,000) to Republicans "as they were in the years 1919 to 1921".
