Burning of the Custom House

Fire climbed the Custom House walls on 25 May 1921, turning a grand British office into a glowing wound in Dublin. More than a hundred IRA volunteers had entered with oil, rags and certainty, believing the building would collapse under the weight of its own symbols. Auxiliaries arrived before the smoke cleared, guns answered guns, and eight lives were lost while nearly eighty men were taken. The flame did what bullets could not: it made the whole city watch England bleed light.