Baker Iron Works, Crown Alley
This was a bomb-making factory in Ballsbridge (see figure 4.2) that the IRA occupied sometime in midspring 1919. Sean Russell and Paddy McHugh inspected the shop on Crown Alley owned by a widow named Margaret Baker for its suitability as an arms factory. Her late husband, Peter, was an engineer and likely left her the iron works when he died sometime between 1901 and 1911. Their second son, Patrick, managed the business, while his younger brother, William, worked in the office. The Bakers let them partition their shop, which faced the Dublin Telephone Exchange, to use machine tools purchased especially for the work by McHugh. Soon after that, IRA machinists under Frank Gaskin were at work.1
Liam Archer, on the GHQ staff, sent Volunteer engineer James Foran to inspect the site for use as a foundry. The chimneys were unsuited to the type of work intended, so he recommended using a gas furnace. Russell approved, and McHugh ordered the furnaces through a sympathizer who worked at the Brooks Thomas building suppliers. While awaiting the delivery, Baker had gas connected to the shop at IRA expense. At the same time, Foran built the brick foundations for the two gas furnaces.2
The gas furnaces worked more efficiently due to the addition of an air compressor, which, when appropriately adjusted, increased the heat, thus speeding the melting process. Of course, not using coal or coke, they did not produce smoke or ash, as the factory on Parnell Street. Due to this increased efficiency, they produced three hundred grenade cases in eight hours. They also improved the process of casting the firing mechanisms and other parts. Once the cases were cast and cooled, they were machined, some of them on site. McHugh said that Baker’s men, although not IRA, sometimes helped in the machining.3
Every few days, IRA transportation men picked up the materials in a cart and took the various parts to other locations for further work. The cases went to O’Rourke’s Bakery on Store Street for filling, the firing sets went to Luke Street for boring out their centers and then to Mountjoy Square for assembly, and the strikers went to Percy Place for further shaping. Some of the grenades were assembled in Dublin, while others were sent out parts, in many cases, to the brigades to be assembled by men specially trained in a course at Parnell Street in 1920.4
Falls Road Belfast Grenade Factory
Toward the end of the spring of 1921, the Third Northern Division established a grenade factory in a shop on the Falls Road in Belfast. The grenade produced was to deal with the mesh-covered military and police vehicles.5 The divisional engineer, John McArdle, designed a “contact grenade,” presumably one that would explode on contact. The divisional quartermaster, Thomas McNally, readily approved the plan. The plans for the grenade have not survived, but the description said that it was “shaped exactly like a Mills, same size, same corrugations but different mechanism.”6
The concept behind this grenade was somewhat unusual in that the armies of the world had generally given up on the contact fuse for such weapons because it was too dangerous. Perhaps this was a sign of the relative inexperience of the Third Northern Division, which did not have the same amount of combat as the Dublin Brigade. The Dublin men’s answer to the wire mesh on the lorries was simple but effective: they attached fishing hooks to their grenades.7 Ultimately, McNally, the divisional quartermaster, said the Volunteers did not like the grenades they made on the Falls Road because, he thought, they did not like “handmade” and “experimental” grenades. Of course, McNally dismissed several accidents with the dangerous bombs, saying they were due likely to “nervous handling.”8