£700,000 massacre study

Published on Tuesday 23 October 2007 01:04

ONE of the bloodiest episodes in Irish history in which thousands of Scots are thought to have died is to be studied in a £700,000 research project being launched by a Scottish university today.

Thousands of Protestant settlers were allegedly massacred by Irish Catholics during the 1641 rebellion and the decade of savage warfare that followed.

Scholars at Aberdeen University will transcribe and digitise more than 3,000 testimonies by those who lived through the alleged massacres.

Tom Bartlett, professor of Irish history, said the evidence had never been comprehensively analysed before and might provide an accurate account of the brutal events that triggered centuries of sectarian divide.

He said: "It's generally now accepted that around 10,000 Protestants died during the uprising, of which two or three thousand were Scots settlers."