About

This project follows the lives of a single family throughout the Great War to illustrate the social, physical and emotional impact of the conflict at an individual level and the irrevocable personal, cultural and societal changes wrought by the war. It is based on the diaries, correspondence, photographs and memorabilia accumulated by the Armstrong family of Moyaliffe Castle, County Tipperary, between 1914 and 1918, which were donated to the Library in 1999.

Notes on Text and Images
The weekly posts consist of extracts from diaries and correspondence created and collected by the Armstrong family during the war years. For ease of reading, spelling mistakes and punctuation have been amended while respecting the integrity of the text. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of transcripts. Where a word or name is unclear it has been identified with a question mark in square brackets: [?]

Owing to the vast quantity of material relating to 1914-1918 contained in the Armstrong collection, it has been necessary to limit some entries to extracts only in order to keep the weekly posts to a manageable size. For example, Pat’s letters to his mother were notoriously long and often repetitive in content. All textual omissions have been marked with three full stops in square brackets: […]

One of the aims of this exhibition is to give the reader a feel for the original material however in some cases the quality of the original has deteriorated with either use or age. In the case of some damaged or poor quality images, we have enhanced the colour or removed blemishes to enrich the reader’s experience.

All original material in the Armstrong Archive can be viewed, by appointment, in the Special Collections and Archives Department of the Glucksman Library, University of Limerick.

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