20th Century - First Decades

     1900 -1910.   As we have already shown, the first decade of the 20th Century saw quite a bit of mountain activity at home in Ireland and in other places.  As Michael Fewer has indicated , the Wicklow mountains were being frequented regularly by a wide range of hikers and cyclists, if mainly of the upper and professional classes, as the visitors' book of Mc Guirk's teahouse indicates. The Brotherhood of the Lug had been founded; members of the Dublin Arts Club had been exploring Ireland's mountains and travelling to Wales for the rock clinbing organised by Geoffrey W. Young.  The Irish members of the Alpine Club held a dinner in Dublin in 1906.

About an equal number of women as of men visited Mc Guirk's on their visits into the Wicklow Hills, although the women's names were often not recorded (e.g Mr & Mrs F. Frowd and maid).  Some of the notable people people who visited were: G.A.J Cole, Director of Geological Survey of Ireland; J.M Synge; J.B. Malone (father of J.B.); Rev. W Doyle, S.J; J. Swift Joly; F.M Browne, S.J. 

    1910-1920.  This was a decade of upheaval in Ireland no less than in many other places. The following events had a significant and devastating effect on Irish society: Dublin Lockout 1913; Great War 1914-18 ; 1916 Rising.  (Follow the links for detailed accounts).  Despite such traumatic occurrances Mc Guirk's continued to be frequented throughout the decade by hikers and cyclists who were venturing into Wicklow's mountains; in 1917 J.J. Cronin beat Hart's time for the return walk from Terenure to Lugnaquilla by more than three hours.  Inevitably, however, mountaineering activities were curtailed due to the outbreak of WW 1, notably on the small group of rock climbers, members of the United Arts Club. 'Poignantly, despite O'Brien's return to Young's gatherings (in Wales) after the war, the influence of the little group on Irish climbing ceased, as Sparrow and Julian were killed during the war, while Dickenson suffered from shell shock.' (Paddy O' Leary)  Of the many notable people who wrote in Mc Guirk's visitors' book only a few are mentioned here because they feature again in this story: Dr John Healy, Alpine Club member and a founder of the IMC;      Joseph Maunsell Hone, wrote Persia in Revolution along with Page Dickinson;    Capt. Eoghan O'Brien, R.E, Alpine Club member;     Brotherhood of the Lug :     Na Sleibhteagaigh

   1920-1930.  Following the Great War Ireland was convulsed between 1919 and 1923 by the War of Independence that preceded the Irish Civil War.  Many of the hill areas that might have been frequented by hikers or mountaineers saw fighting and unrest and became guerilla refuges during the conflicts, somewhat akin to how they were used by Rapparees in earlier times. It would have been a foolhardy soul who ventured into such places for recreational activities.  With the end of hostilities in 1923 there was a gradual return to mountain activities in Ireland.  As paddy O'Leary indicates it was Claude Wall and friends who were among the earliest to venture into the Dublin and Wicklow hills.  In 1925, the 15 year old Harold Johnson began climbing on The Scalp, an area of granite boulders and cliffs near Kiltiernan.  At school in Kendal, in the English Lake District, he subsequently was involved, with Maurice Linnell, in the devlopment of the climbing at Buckbarrow Crag near his school.

Buckbarrow Crag

The Scalp (1888 Lovett)

Despite the convulsed state of Ireland during these years numbers of Irish people were active in mountains in other parts of the world, viz. Valentine Ryan, Charles Howard Bury, Mervyn Ryan,   Ernest Shackleton, Tom Crean; and their exploits will be viewed in due course.

Early 20th Century

 A number of Irish people were very active in Alpine regions in the early years of the 20th Century.

Valentine Ryan and William Trench Kirkpatrick  were being recognised as leading figures among Alpinists of the era.  In Ireland members of the Dublin Arts Club such as Page Dickinson were exploring the Irish hills and mountains for their mountaineering possibilities. Such figures were the ones who were making notable achievements in the sport and remain the ones that are remembered. 

Did such an activity influence the 'ordinary man in the street' ?  Were others indulging in such a leisure-time pursuit, even if at a lower level?

Since the 1880s in a repurposed gate lodge on the Powerscourt estate the McGuirk family ran a tea-shop.  This was located in the heart of the Wicklow Hills, close to Lower Lough Bray but actually in Co Dublin.  A visitor's book was kept by the McGuirks which many of their guests signed and entered comments.  Michael Fewer has analysed this in Tales from a Wicklow Tea Room and provides evidence that the facility was being used by a great many cyclists and hikers from the end of the 19th Century, into the 20th Century up to about 1960.

Hill walkers were..frequent callers at McGuirk's.  Country walking then was a pastime mainly enjoyed by middle- and upper-class people, and ramblers' clubs such as the Sléibhteágaigh and the Brotherhood of the Lug were established in the early twentieth century. (Fewer).

The 'great and the Good' of the Arts and professional classes visited Mc Guirk's on their visits to the Wicklow Hills.  As time went on the addresses listed became more and more from working-class areaas of Dublin.  According to The Irish Times (Sep 1902), ascents of Mangerton and Carrauntoohill in Kerry were common and 'great mountain and open-air tramps were a feature of Dublin life' in the first decade of the century.

The following is a list of some of the people who visited or wrote in the guest book:

J.B Malone; Fr. Willie Doyle, SJ; J Swift Joly; Fr F.M Brown SJ; Standish O'Grady; Oliver Gogarty; J.M Synge; Hugh Lane; John Healy;  William P. Hackett, SJ; Ben Kiely; Samuel Beckett.

Quaternions and Mountains - Charles Jasper Joly

   There seems to be little connection between Quaternions and Mountains but Charles Jasper Joly was a man who combined a deep knowledge and love of both.  (What are 'quaternions' - you might well ask. According to Wikipedia they are: A type of four-dimensional hypercomplex number consisting of a real part and three imaginary parts and are commonly used in vector mathematics and as an alternative to matrix algebra in calculating the rotation of three-dimensional objects. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space and also have practical uses in applied mathematics, particularly for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations, such as in three-dimensional computer graphics, computer vision, magnetic resonance.)

Born in County Offaly in 1864, at St Catherine's Rectory where his father was Rector, ( The land for the rectory had been provided by the town's landlord Charles William Bury, whose family will enter our story later.)  Joly's first school was in Portarlington before attending

Weissmies (Wikipedia)

 Galway Grammar School and entering Trinity College in 1882 from where he graduated in mathematics and experimental physics in 1886.  After this he went to Berlin to follow his interest in experimental physics in the laboratory of Herman von Helmholtz ( as had John Tyndall, some 30 years earlier). It may have been here that his interest in mountaineering began. He returned to Ireland on the death of his father and his first Alpine exploit seems to have been in 1892 on a visit to Switzerland when he climbed the Weissmies and crossed the Alhubeljoch.

His climbs of that year and the following two seasons were his qualifying achievements for membership of the Alpine Club to which he was elected in 1895 where he was proposed and seconded by two other Irish members and Trinity graduates - George Scriven and William Spotswood Green.

Rock climbing was of special interest and he spent some of his happiest mountain holidays among the the Dolomites around Cortina and San Martino. Despite a delicate appearance he possessed endurance, courage, and a keen sense of humour, once leading a group successfully down from the Eiger in a snowstorm.

In 1897 he was appointed Royal Astronomer of Ireland and lived at Dunsink observatory until his early death from typhoid in 1906.  By then he had published on mathematics and astronomy; one of his most important works was Manual of Quaternions (1905), brought out in the centenary year of Hamilton's birth. 

Alpine Club

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