English: The Birthplace of Michael Collins Michael Collins was the celebrated Irish patriot and military strategist who was the most influential in bringing the British to the negotiating table in the Irish War of Independence 1916 - 1920. His humble birthplace is now a Memorial Centre, which also includes the ruins of his home into which his family had later moved, burned in reprisal by British forces under Major Percival (later General Percival, who presided over the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1941).