Cork should have tiny statue of ‘mosquito that killed Oliver Cromwell,’ councillor says

‘The world’s smallest statue’ of one of history’s smallest assassins

12:03, 13 May 2026Updated 12:06, 13 May 2026

A statue of Cromwell – and his mortal mosquito enemy(Image: Getty)

Cork has several statues of local heroes and characters – from Olympic runner Sonia Sullivan to Father Mathew and the Onion Sellers. Now a councillor wants to pay homage to a less celebrated legend from history: the Leeside mosquito that supposedly bit Oliver Cromwell.

Green Cork Cllr Oliver Moran has urged Cork City Council to “erect a statue to the mosquito or midge that bit Oliver Cromwell during his siege of the city, causing his death through ‘Cork fever’ (malaria).” Cllr Moran added that the statue would also enable Cork to boast ownership of “the world’s smallest public statue.”

It would contrast sharply with the five public statues of Cromwell himself that still stand in the UK, including one outside Parliament in London – which proved controversial when it was built in 1899, with one Welsh Catholic MP trying (and failing) to have it removed.

The tyrannical British leader Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, after wreaking horrors across Ireland and reducing the population by 25%. Historians believe that he suffered an attack of kidney stone disease and malaria – the so-called ‘Cork fever’ – with local legend suggesting that he was bitten by a midge while marching through the Rebel County.

Cromwell came to Ireland in August 1649 in a bid to crush local resistance against his rule, committing bloody massacres across the country. The Corporation of Cork surrendered to him in a bid to avoid bloodshed, leading to severe Cromwellian oppression for the Catholics of Cork.

But while his suppressive laws persisted into the 1680s and beyond, Cromwell himself would not last as long, dying in 1658 – nine years after the legendary midge bite. While there’s little historical evidence linking Cromwell’s death to a Leeside mosquito, the story has been a staple of Cork folklore for decades – and a statue would cement a popular piece of storytelling in the public consciousness.

Willard Wigan’s tiny Statue of Liberty – in the eye of a needle(Image: Willard Wigan)

The miniature midge monument would be tiny, joining a host of short statues across the world – including a barely visible Statue of Liberty replica in the UK that stands at just 0.5mm tall.

The diminutive Lady Liberty was made by British sculptor Willard Wigan, who holds the current record for creating the smallest sculptures on Earth. In 2017, he crafted a microscopic sculpture of a human foetus, measuring a mere 0.078 by 0.053 millimetres.

And last year, artist David Lindon from Dorset in the UK created a handmade sculpture of a yellow smiley face the size of a human blood cell.

So while the Munster midge is unlikely to beat some of these microscopic records, it would no doubt be the smallest public statue in Ireland – a proud claim now that Dublin has taken the title of ‘Ireland’s Tallest Building’ from us.