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.

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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 an early member 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.

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J W Healy

(Fewer)

 John Healy was born in 1895, possibly in Kerry, but lived in Dublin as a teenager and walked extensively in Dublin/Wicklow hills.  The events of the second decade of 20th C in Ireland and Europe seem not to have affected him greatly -  he signed the visitor's book at Mc Guirk's on 1st November 1913 and recorded a substantial walk, with a couple of friends, of about 56km.

After graduating in medicine from UCD in 1918, he went to England that year and took up a temporary commission with the RAF that allowed him to further his hillwalking in Wales and Cumberland. He later worked as a doctor in the South Western Fever Hospital in Stockwell and became Deputy Medical Superintendent with London County Council.

Diablons. Wikipedia

Elected to membership of the Alpine Club in 1935 he recorded on his application form (as John Weston Healy) that he did a  'Traverse of the three peaks of Diablons - via Col deTrocuit & SE arete' in 1923,    a traverse of the Matterhorn fom Breuil to Zermatt in 1924 and climbed Mt Blanc in 1925.

  Dr. Healy was highly regarded for his technical knowledge of Alpine topography. Notably, he was a pioneer in identifying massive, steep climbing faces in Europe. During a notable club lecture, he introduced British climbers to the sheer face of the Glärnisch rising directly above the Klöntalersee lake. His analysis helped establish it among contemporaries as one of the premier vertical walls in the Alps.  Although he may not have climbed any really hard routes he was active in the Alps well into the 1950s, mostly with a guide in his early days and guideless in later years.

What is believed to be the first official meet of the Alpine Club was in Langdale in 1941, attended by its president Geoffrey Winthrop Young and others, including  J W Healy.  He was also a member of the Swiss Alpine Club (Association of British Members of SAC) acting as a Vice President from 1956 to '58; also the first overseas member of the IMC (Irish Mountaineering Club), if not one of its founding members. 

Djouce. Cormac Keenan

 After his retirement he returned to Ireland, lived in Sandymount and attended many IMC lectures. He died in 1975 and had claimed that his mountaineering inspiration ..

'for me it was the schoolboy's memory of seeing suddenly the summit of Djouce shining with snow in the sunshine'. (IMC Journal '73).

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Early Alpinists (20th C) W.T. Kirkpatrick.

 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.

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.

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

Pic de la Maije (Wikipedia)

 and an Irishman.

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.

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