The Wrens of the Curragh

The Wrens of the Curragh: A Courageous Community on the Plains Out on the windswept plains of the Curragh in County Kildare, during the mid-1800s, lived a group of women who became known—sometimes harshly—as “the Wrens.”

Their homes weren't houses in the traditional sense, but hollows, ditches, banks, and furze bushes that sheltered them like nests—hence the name. Many of the Wrens were orphaned during the Great Famine or otherwise dispossessed. With little or no support, some turned to prostitution to survive. Others had common-law partnerships with soldiers stationed at the Curragh Camp. But whatever their background, they formed a community that shared everything they could: food, shelter, childcare, companionship, even basic safety. Daily Life & Struggle Life was brutally hard. The nests offered little protection from rain, cold, or storms. Water was scarce—one account says the military camp didn't always supply it, even when illness struck. Basic medical aid was virtually unavailable. Still, within that hardship, the Wrens built something remarkable: a patchwork of care and mutual support. Older women cared for children, newcomers found someone to show them where to shelter, and money or goods were shared when possible. Some women could write; some tried selling small items to get by. It wasn't elegant, but it was resilient.

How the Outside World Saw Them

To “polite society,” the Wrens were scandalous. There are reports of priests tearing shawls off these women, beating them, cutting their hair, for daring to be visible in town. They were blamed for spreading disease among soldiers. Newspapers and pamphlets covered them in sensational terms. Funny enough, that coverage is part of how we know their story today. In 1867, a journalist named James Greenwood spent time among them and published a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, detailing their lives—not always in kindly terms, but in vivid ones. That exposure stirred public concern and helped push for reforms. One outcome was the 1868 Curragh of Kildare Act, which introduced a “lock hospital” to treat venereal diseases connected to what people saw as the camp's moral problems. Names & Records Some of the women show up in jail or prison records, often for minor offences like trespassing on the Curragh Camp. One Bridget Doolan was noted dozens of times over the years. There's a Mary Burns who appears in multiple sources and may match one of the stories Greenwood recorded. Many of these women disappeared from official records—hard to track whether they moved, died, or simply vanished. Legacy By the 1880s, references to the Wrens fade. The camps around the Curragh and changing social attitudes, reforms, and laws—all chipped away at how the community could survive. But their story remains powerful. It reminds us of what goes on at society's edges—of dignity in hardship, solidarity where there was none, and lives lived outside public respect, but deeply human all the same.