Chris Lawlor’s lecture on Michael Dwyer and in particular his guerrilla campaign in the Wicklow mountains and its legacy was very well received by a packed audience at the Lalor Centre on Tuesday 4 November 2025. The 200th anniversary of Dwyer’s death occurred in August of this year.
Dwyer’s exploits assumed a mythic proportion in his native county of Wicklow. He was born into a farming family and raised in the Camara and then Eadstown areas of the Glen of Imaal. Chris Lawlor analysed Dwyer’s activities as an insurgent during the 1798 rebellion and his long guerrilla campaign in the Wicklow mountains. This included the famous escape from the cottage at Derrynamuck in February 1799, when his comrade Sam McAllister sacrificed his life to give Dwyer a chance to survive. Dwyer and his fellow rebels continued their ambushes and raids in the Wicklow mountains for almost seven years. The impact of the lengthy guerilla campaign on the locality was also examined. On 14 August 1805 Dwyer walked through the gates of Humewood and into custody. He was imprisoned at Kilmainham jail until August 1805 on a charge of high treason.
Dwyer sailed as a free man with his wife and other former rebels aboard the Tellicherry to Port Jackson in New South Wales on 8 August 1805. The fact that he did not ‘fight until he died ‘ did not detract from his story. Neither were his twenty years in Australia uneventful. Dwyer became an inspirational icon following his death in 1825; the guerilla campaign of this man-of-action captured the Nationalist imagination. A statue of Dwyer was unveiled in his native Imaal in December 2003 by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
We are very grateful to Chris Lawlor for providing this insightful evaluation of the life of Michael Dwyer ‘The Wicklow Chief’.
Photo: A depiction of the ambush at the cottage in Derrynamuck, courtesy of Chris Lawlor.