Other than from his mountaineering writing we know very little about William Trench Kirkpatrick. (See Paddy O'Leary's William Trench Kirkpatrick in Vol IV of the IMEHS journal). Family lore holds that his paternal ancestor came from Scotland and was on the ship the broke the boom to relieve the Siege of Derry. Other ancestors may have been settled in Larne at this time and William's father was the seventeenth child of Alexander of Drumcondra and he married K(C)atherine Trench who owned Donacomper House in Celbridge, on 29 August 1854.
William, born on first of August 1857 at Monkstown in Dublin, was their second child and had six siblings. Katherine kept a diary for most of her married life and this gives some insight into the activities of such a family over a period of years, although seldom throwing any light on William's mountaineering career. In August 1861, when there were four children, endearingly called 'the chicks', they all 'went up Killiney Hill'; an early start to a mountaineering career.
In September of '67 'my darling Willie went to school'. He had just turned ten. Although his father accompanied him to Temple Grove School on the outskirts of London it must have been a wrench for the young lad and when the father returned a week later he reported that Willie 'was very wretched.'
Katherine, his mother, sometimes combined his collection from school into something of a holiday and in July 1870 this was spent in North Wales where they walked in Llanberris Pass, visited Swallow Falls and swam in Ogwen Lake.
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| JMW Turner. Rigi |
The 'Grand Tour' was likely to have been 'de rigueur' for such a family. Katherine and the children undertook such a tour late in 1872 after Willie had returned to school and it lasted for almost two years. Part of the reason for the tour was that Mary, Willie's older sister had musical talent and she was visiting Belgium and Switzerland for voice training. The schoolboys joined them for the Christmas and Easter vacations that year and in May they moved from Brussels to Spa and then through Germany towards Lucerne, where Alexander and the boys joined them on the fifth of August. Two days later the father and boys left at 5am by boat to cross the lake and then walked up and down Mount Rigi (1,798m) – Willie's first Alpine summit.
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| Rigi (Summit Post) |
A week later the boys 'went to Mt Pilatus to sleep there ... saw a lovely sunrise...had wretched beds and living'. A few days later he went with father and sister Mary, to Hospenthal where they spent two days, crossed the Furka Pass (2,429m) and visited the Rhone Glacier. After this they went on to Interlaken from where they did a short, steep, climb to view the Jungfrau, then went on to Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald and visited another glacier. So ended his first Alpine season for the sixteen year old William and the tenth of September was the boys' last day before heading back to school with the father.
He matriculated for Trinity College, Cambridge in Michaelmas term of 1876. After
taking exams in late 1882 he was called to the Bar in 1883. His
visits home continued at every opportunity; at Christmas, Easter and
summertime when he continued to pursue his outdoor interests of
hunting, shooting and fishing. 
As
well as his work in the legal profession he seems to have been
interested in writing and acted as a special correspondent for The
Times, for which he went on a tour through Ireland, visiting Belfast,
the Giant's Causeway, some of the midland counties and Mitchelstown
in Cork. This tour took place between visits to Norway (1885) and
Australia (1889), that may have been undertaken for journalistic
reasons. In later
years he contributed at least seven articles on his mountaineering
exploits to the prestigious Alpine Journal that were compiled into
one volume, published as 'Alpine Days and Nights', in 1932.
Details of his mountaineering career have been outlined elsewhere
(Journal IMEHS Vol. 4, Paddy O'Leary) but only get occasional
mention in this diary where it records that he went to London on
July 9th of 1895 but his Alpine Club application records that this
was his first Alpine season when he climbed six summits in the
Ortler region. It was during this season that he met up with the Scot,
Robert Phillip Hope, at Sulden, with whom, along with another
friend (W. Barnard) they climbed the Ortler summits without the
help of local guides.
They didn't climb from centres and in 1902, with Hope, -
we slept at no fewer than thirty different places among the
mountains...our high water mark by traversing the Maije ...
the first English traverse ...without guides - done by a Scotchman
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| Pic de la Maije (Wikipedia) |
The practice of not using guides was somewhat frowned upon
by the Alpine Club but this was the beginning of a long partnership
that resulted in first ascents and new routes. They were together on
the Isle of Skye the following year, climbing Sgurr nan Gillean,
Sgurr Dearg and Inaccessible Pinnacle among others.
In 1915, with members of the United Arts Club,
he climbed Barravore Crag in Wicklow.
Thenceforth
we climbed together every year till the war, except
Alpine Club (AJ 53, 1941)
in 1904 (when I was in South Africa), and visited pretty well
every district in the Alps. We climbed most of the well-known
mountains, traversing them in a large proportion of cases, and also
did a good many out-of-the- way peaks that are seldom climbed by
Englishmen, ...After the war we climbed again, but in 1922 we gave
up mountaineering, but continued to visit the Alps, walking up hill,
and doing glacier expeditions. Our last visit together was in 1929 .
..(Hope's obituary. AJ.42. 1930) which would have been when
William was seventy
two. He died in 1941.
His being very much involved in local matters in Kildare resulted
in his name appearing on more than six hundred occasions in
the Kildare Observer, the local newspaper. During these same years
he was also performing substantial feats of mountaineering on a
regular basis in the Alps without arousing any local awareness in
Ireland, which may be indicative of the general lack of interest in the
Ireland of the day in such activity.
