Kildare History

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Sara

At the Start
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Jul 25, 2006
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I just had an email from the racing historian Guy Williams - I'd been hoping to catch up with hiim over the last weekend but he was away sadly, so we missed meeting up this time.

He told me he's currently hard at work on a mammoth History of the Irish National Stud.

Before replying I checked online to see if another book we'd been hoping to collaborate on had come to light* - he's been working on that one for many years LOL - and found the website below for the Kildare Historical Society. It has a notice of a talk which Guy gave last summer to the KHS but there is a great deal of other stuff ont here which might be of interest to forumites

http://www.kildare.ie/greyabbey/archives/kildare_town_history/

* No sign of the book being published ... !


PS there is also a very interesting history of the Curragh, to those of us not conversant with same, quite a long way down. I was amused by this snippet since I didn't know the story:

<< ... Two years later Queen Victoria conferred royal status on the new Curragh Camp when Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, was posted there. Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well for either the Prince or his Mama. The Prince was deflowered by an actress smuggled in for that purpose, contracting venereal disease that rendered him unfit for marriage. Prince Albert, his father, caught a fatal chill while reprimanding his errant son. Mama never forgave Edward for precipitating her husband's death. >>
 
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Thanks, Heads, it is interesting to read about the extent of the tension between the military and the Turf Club about use of the Curragh. I guess the army people didn't like the idea of crowds of ne'er do wells being attracted to the vicinity of their barracks on race days.

http://www.ipaireland.com/Capital%20Letter%20Apr%2007.pdf

This is a link to a good article about Dan Donnelly, after whom Donnelly's Hollow on the Athgarvan side of the Curragh is named. It's nothing to do with racing, but Donnelly was a colourful character who beat the English champion of the time in a bare knuckle fight on this site watched by a huge crowd.

The article doesn't mention it, but Patrick Myler's book on the same subject reports that it took the victory procession five days to get back to Dublin. As it rolled into College Green, a short step away from where he was born on Townsend St, his mother allegedly opened her bodice and told the crowd "Them's the breasts that reared him".
 
Great stuff! I love this kind of history, and the web now saves hours of fumbling about in the dusty stacks of the London Library to find it

I love all that stuff about bare knuckle fighting - I did the picture research many moons ago for the Folio Society reprint of Pierce Egan's 'Boxiana', a famous account of Regency pugilism. Fascinating byways of history!


PS The story of Donelly's missing arm reminds me of the stuffed lurcher which used to be displayed in a pub in Lincoln called The Strugglers (after those men who hung onto the legs of the hanged, to hasten them on their way, the pub overlooking what had been the site of the gallows). The lurcher had belonged to a former custmer, a poacher, who had been hanged; and the dog having pined away at the pub was stuffed by the customers in honour of his fidelity. There was a notice in the pub about all this. I regretted not seeing the taxidermist's immortalisation of this noble hound; but blow me when I visited Lincoln Prison the following day, there he was on show in his glass case! I took a photo.
 
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