1798 Memorial

Mud, muscle and memory: Murphy led men into Arklow’s gun smoke, died within thirty yards of the king’s line, and his head went on a spike as a warning. A century later stone answered steel. George Smyth shaped white limestone into that charge, set it on Main Street, and left the mixed panels alone because moving them might have broken them. The monument does not decorate the town; it remembers the violence the town survived.