You may think that during the famine, everyone was busy dying or heading off to the US, but there were plenty who fought against the injustices perpetrated upon the Irish people. It was here in the Famine Warhouse that rebels, under the leadership of the Protestant aristocrat, William Smith O’Brien, M.P., besieged 47 police who had barricaded themselves into the McCormack farmhouse, taking five children hostage. Today, it is a museum, with exhibits that chart the history of the famine and the mass emigration that accompanied it, as well the rebellion and the trials for high treason that followed it.
