Clubs and Organisations

 The Alpine Club, the world's first mountaineering club was founded in London in 1857.

Its first President was Irishman, John Ball and James Bryce, another Irishman,  was President from 1899 to 1901, before being appointed Ambassador to the USA.

As we have seen, many of the pioneering Irish alpinists of the 19th C had been members of the AC.  It

University Club

seems that from among those living in Ireland that the first organised 'mountaineering' event was held. James Bryce, as Under Secretary of State for Ireland, had led 'his panting subordinates up the steep side of Croagh Patrick'.  If this event is discounted it was the dinner held by the Irish AC members in the University Club on St Stephen's Green, Dublin, that might qualify.  Bryce had been the President of the Alpine Club, was an important figure in Ireland's administrative establishment and was soon to be appointed as British Ambassador to the USA and the event may have been organised by his AC colleagues to celebrate this.  However, there was no Irish club or organisation involved.

ALPINE CLUB DINNER IN DUBLIN.-The first dinner of members of the Alpine Club resident in Ireland was held at the University Club, Dublin, on January 26, 1906. The members of the latter Club having invited their fellow Alpinists' to meet the Right Hon. James Bryce, ex-President of the A. C., the following party assembled to welcome him to Ireland: H. de Fellenberg Montgomery (senior member), in the chair; Sir F. J. Cullinan, C.B.; Hon. G. Fitzgerald, Rev. W. S. Green, H. Warren, G. Scriven, R. M. Barrington, Rev. P. S. Whelan, H. Synnett, W. J. Kirkpatrick, G. B. Tunstall Moore.  (Courtesy: Alpine Club).

More about these to follow.

Early Brotherhood
 members

Brotherhood of the Lug                                                                                                                Somewhat earlier another event took place that could be regarded as the inaugeration of the first 'mountain' club.  This was the foundation of the 'Brotherhood of the Lug' that took place on the summit of Lugnaquilla (The Lug), the highest mountain in Wicklow and Leinster, on March 8th 1903.  Although not claiming to be 'mountaineers', they were prodigious walkers regularly walking distances of 35 km in the Wicklow hills.  The 'cradle' of the Lug, as they called it, was the Vale View Hotel in Avoca, where they stayed overnight before their annual ascent of Lugnaquilla.  The club continues to the present time and its hiking, trekking and climbing is no longer limited to Wicklow, as it was initially, but ventures much further afield.

See IMEHS Journal Vol 4:  Peter Quinn, Ireland's Oldest Walking Club for more detail.

United Arts Club, Dublin.  It came into existence in 1907; W. B. Yeats, George “AE” Russell, Lady Augusta Gregory -  these writers, along with Ellie Duncan, Count Casimir and Countess Constance Markievicz, founded the United Arts Club.  Despite having no obvious connection with mountaineering a number of its members were enthusiastic Rock Climbers and visited North Wales to climb with the leading British alpinists of the day.  These were such people as Conor O'Brien and Page Dickenson and others.

More about these to follow.

CHA - founded in Britain in 1891 ( by Rev. T.A. Leonard) as the Co-Operative Holiday Association.
This organisation arranged 'good value' walking holidays and established hostels in England, Scotland and Wales. with the aim of encouraging people to visit and enjoy the countryside.  In 1922, James Doyle, who had holidayed with the organisation, wanted to set up a similar association in Dublin.  On writing to the HQ in England, he was given a list of 42 names from Ireland of people who had holidayed with the group, 27 of which were in Dublin.  Following an 'ad' in the Evening Mail and after writing to some, the first meeting was held on 13 Sep 1922.  About 20 attended and the first 'Ramble' was on the 21 October 1922 when they met in Rathfarnham 'a village nestling at the foot of the Dublin Mountains'.  They continued with a programme of rambles and social events, opening a hostel in Bray that had to close in the 70s.  The 2nd WW and the lack of transport affected activities and membership but the club continues today as the Countrywide Hillwalkers Association.  See here for more details.

HF stands for Holiday Fellowship and has its origins in  Lancashire when, in 1891, the Rev T.A.
Leonard starting taking young people walking on the hills. He first formed Co-operative Holidays Association (CHA) and then in 1913 he formed the Holiday Fellowship.

Early HF hikers.

 The emphasis of the organization was on healthy outdoor exercise and temperance (long since abandoned!).   The Dublin branch of Holiday Fellowship was founded in March 1930 by a small group on the south side of Dublin, The Club grew rapidly in members, including Guinness employees and every year they went to an HF center to holiday. There were many notables in the club, like Wilfred Brambell and Dr. Sheehy Skeffington. From the early days there was a programme of rambles and hikes in the mountains of Wicklow and surroundings.                                                                                                                      The club now has  no formal link with the UK company HF Holidays,  though it occasionally holidays in one of its houses.    See here for more information.

Hostel Association:  We are An Óige, the Irish Youth Hostel Association. We were founded in 1931 and ever since it has been our mission to provide safe, affordable, comfortable accommodation and experiences to the young and young at heart. Our aim is to foster an appreciation of nature and the world around us to all, be it backpackers, school groups or families. Many of the hoistels are located in remote areas and give easy access to Ireland mountain regions.

Scouting Ireland:  Scouting Ireland has its history in two legacy Scouting organisations — the Scout Association of Ireland (SAI), formerly known as the Boy Scouts of Ireland, and the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland (CBSI). The former traces its roots to 1908, and the latter was founded in 1927 – both trace their legacy to Lord Baden-Powell's Scout Movement.                                                                         By 1908, the influence of Baden-Powell's Scout Movement had spread from Great Britain to Ireland. The first recorded meeting of Scouts in Ireland took place at the home of Richard P. Fortune, a Royal Naval Volunteer Reservist, at 3 Dame Street, Dublin on 15 February 1908 where four boys were enrolled in the Wolf Patrol of the 1st Dublin Troop. The earliest known Scouting event in Ireland took place in the Phoenix Park in 1908 with members of the Dublin City Boy Scouts (later Scouting Ireland S.A.I.) taking part.                                                                                                                                           In Dublin in the 1920s, two Roman Catholic priests, Fathers Tom and Ernest Farrell, followed the progress of Scouting and in  1926 the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland (CBSI) (Gasóga Catoilici na hÉireann) was created. CBSI would later become the largest Scout association on the island.

These organisations (other than the Alpine Club) are unlikely to consider themselves 'Mountaineering' clubs.  (It was even sugested that the AC was founded for 'gentlemen who enjoyed walking steeply uphill'! ) The CHA has designated itself a 'Rambling Club'.  However, all of them have facilitated the activity of climbing mountains among their members.

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Early mountaineering in Ireland

 'Although Irish mountaineers were prominent in the early development of Alpine climbing, mountaineering in Ireland did not take a firm root until recently. (mid 20th C)

    The Irish Alpinists did not neglect their homeland hills, but they treated them principally as practice grounds for the Alps, and their attentions did not give rise to a vigorous school of local climbers as was the case in Great Britain...'

This statement by Pyat & Robson (IMC Journal Vol 1) is accurate but only up to a point.  It fails to mention the people on the island, not Alpinists or mountaineers in a strict sense, who nevertheless were 'hillwalking' and climbing Irish hills during the 19th C.  It also ignores the clubs and organisations that encouraged 'rambling' and 'hiking' in the outdoors without claiming to be 'mountaineering' clubs.

Here, I'll look at the written evidence of people who were hillwalking and climbing during the 19th Century.  Further on I'll look at the clubs and organisations that seemed to encourage such activities among their members.

Poets and writers mentioned their enjoyment of mountains and mountain scenery (Brian Merriman, Mary Tighe) but the earliest written record of a specific climb seems to have been written by Caesar Otway after his visit to Donegal in 1822 when he climbed Muckish.  The account was published in 1839 in his book 'Sketches in Ireland''. (see below)

Muckish

Muckish

Mary Burtchell was a resident of Graiguenamanagh, Co Kilkenny and records in a diary entry for 16th Aug 1845 that she climbed the nearby Brandon Hill.  No great feat of mountaineering, it does indicate her interest in venturing into relatively wild upland terrain and she went, again, to the higheset point in Co Kilkenny on 9th Sep 1850.  She gives no further information on her trips.

Brandon Hill

In 1849, a Waterford man, ( a member of the Mackesy family) wrote a detailed account of a two-day venture into the Comeragh Mountains in which he gives a detailed account of his journey with a description of the terrain and many of the lakes and cooms --

        Let us ascend. Aye, it is very steep, and the day is bright and hot ; but take it quietly—you have        only a two-mile walk before you. For a part of the way the grass is pleasant, and we can go straight onwards. But ever as we climb, the heath and ling become tougher and taller, the grass thinner, the stones more numerous, the dried-up channels of the winter floods more deep and  frequent ; so that we can no longer hold a direct course, but must deviate into many a zig-zag;  and still, as we surmount each swelling knoll, the dark Coum above seems to recede, and the way  to lengthen before us.  (Dublin University Magazine 1849).

(for full account see IMEHS Journal Vol 5; forthcoming)

There were other residents who made significant expeditions to Greater Ranges abroad but don't seem to have recorded any such activity in their homeland.  John Palliser is likely to have hiked in the Comeraghs and William Spotswood Green in the Kerry mountains.

Of course, some of the very fanous Irish Alpinists undertook some climbing at home and this will be looked at soon.

Caesar Otway's climb of Muckish:

But the lofty cloud- compelling Muckish was near Ards, and on this pig's back I was determined to mount-there will be no limits to vision from it; I shall see all Donegal, and Innishowen, and Tyrone; I shall see Derry, the brave devoted city, the joy of the whole Protestant world, under my feet; I shall see the fine land-locked Lough Swilly, the deep indented waters of Mulroy. In short, I shall see what I have ever had a passion for seeing, a wide and outstretched view, from a mountain.

 So, in spite of the fervours of a July day, and joined in the daring enterprise by some of the younger part of the family at Ards, we set forth to climb the mountain, and here it was literally climbing. There are some lofty mountains you can ride to the top of. To the craggy height of Snowdon, Welsh tourists, as I am informed, ascend in carriages; but rest assured this facility was not possible to us; for actually in many places we had to catch hold of the heath and and rock to help us in the ascent; and so steep and downright was the mountain, that a stone of any size could be hurled from the top to the bottom. Thus amusing ourselves rolling down  the compact silicious rock, and observing the noise, velocity, smoke, and flashes of fire that were elicited in the momentum of the descent, at last, after near four hours' exertion, we arrived at the summit of our ambition.

 I ran, covered with perspiration and panting with heat, to mount the topmost ridge; and just as we arrived there, just as we had cast our eyes around, and began to feast on the immense vision of earth and ocean beneath us, a vast murky cloud from the Atlantic, big with sleet and moisture, enveloped us as well as the whole top of the mountain as with a night-cap, and made every thing so dark, indistinct, and dreary, that we could scarcely see one another : besides, it was attended with such a cold, cutting breeze, that we, who were all with pores open under the process of perspiration, felt as if the Cacodemon of the mountain, in revenge for his invaded solitari- ness, had risen in anger, and armed with a scythe, had rushed on to cut us asunder-to retreat, there- fore, was the best policy. ......

 But I, whose curiosity was more intense than that of my friends, in spite of a cold and driving sleet, and fearless of a fever, still lingered behind, and hastily observed that on the top of this lofty mountain, which at a distance appears so acute and linear in its ridge, there was a plain of some acres, on which grew in luxuriance that species of saxifrage, so great an ornament to our gardens, called London pride. I also took time to observe, that on the north-western side of the elevation where it stands exposed to the driving sleet and tempest, and saline spray of the great Atlantic, even the white quartz rock is decomposed, and has been con- verted by the agency of the elements into beds of minute sand, as white as the driven snow-this the proprietor of the mountain rolls down the side of the hill in canvas bags, and exports to Dumbarton in Scotland

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