The Pikeman on Denny Street in Tralee is the second one. The first, a limestone figure unveiled in 1905, stood for sixteen years until the Black and Tans dragged it from its pedestal and smashed it in 1921, during the War of Independence. What replaced it – Albert Power’s striding bronze of 1939 – is both a memorial and a piece of sculpture with an argument to make. It remembers the men of the United Irishmen’s rising of 1798, and of the later risings of 1803, 1848 and 1867.
The two statues
The campaign began in 1901, in the surge of nationalism that followed the centenary of the 1798 Rebellion, when the Kerry County Board of the GAA set out to raise a memorial in Tralee. A local stonemason carved the original from limestone, using marble from Castleisland and stone from Ballybeggan; the nationalist activist Maud Gonne laid the foundation stone in 1902, and the figure was unveiled in 1905.
After the Black and Tans destroyed it in 1921, a committee – including some of the original members – set about replacing it in 1927. They first turned to the Kerry-born sculptor Jerome Connor, but his delays and a legal dispute ended that, and the commission passed to the Dublin sculptor Albert G. Power. Maud Gonne, by then Maud Gonne McBride, came back to Tralee to unveil Power’s bronze on 6 June 1939 – the same woman who had laid the foundation stone of its predecessor thirty-seven years before.
What Power put into it
Power gave the figure a quiet, deliberate piece of symbolism. The pikeman stands on the roots of a burnt-out tree, meant as the roots of his own torched home: a man who has lost everything but holds on to his claim to justice. ‘This man is Ireland,’ the sculptor said of him. The pedestal carries panels for each of the four risings it commemorates, under a dedication to the Nationalists of Kerry who gave their lives and liberties for Ireland.
Like a lot of monuments, it hasn’t stayed put. It was shifted around 1975 and again around 1995 to make way for building work and a culvert below the street – the base still carries the mason’s mark, ‘O Brien Castleisland 1995’.
Visiting
This is a five-minute stop, not a day out, and worth being honest about that. The statue stands on its own at the top of Denny Street, more or less in the traffic, so cross with a bit of care to read the panels at the base. The reward is the story rather than the spectacle.
The real depth is a two-minute walk away at the Kerry County Museum, in the Ashe Memorial Hall, which puts the risings and the rest of Kerry’s history in proper context – treat the Pikeman as the prelude to it. Tralee Town Park and its Rose Garden are a short stroll south if you want somewhere green to sit afterwards.
Practical information
- Admission: Free. It’s an open-air public monument with no fixed hours.
- Getting there: Denny Street is a short walk from Tralee’s railway station and the bus interchange; many services stop nearby.
- Parking: No useful on-street parking at the monument itself – use the paid car parks in the town centre, such as Ashe Street or the one near Austin Stack Park.
- Accessibility: The surrounding pavement is level, though the monument sits in a busy junction and the plinth is raised above the street.
Before you move on, read all four panels at eye level – the ones for 1803 and 1848 are easy to walk past – then go down the street to the Kerry County Museum, where the history they commemorate is told in full.