The following are some of the people involved with mountains, mainly during the 19th Century. There will be further additions to the list in due course.
Charles Barrington 2 Susan Gavan Duffy
Richard Barrington 3 Elizabeth Hawkins-Whithed
James Bryce 4 Elizabeth Le Blond
Arthur David Mc Cormick 6 Mary Tighe
Richard Cotter 7 Beatrice Tomasson
Frederick Fitzjames Cullinan 8 Louisa Tyndall
Maxwell Cormac Cullinan 9. Frederica Plunkett
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
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| University Club |
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| 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.
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| 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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| Recorded mountains to 1700 |
John de Courcy has detailed the summits that appear on maps up to 1700.
(see Mountaineering Ireland. IMEHS Journal, Vol 2, 2005)
Charles Vallencey produced a military survey
of parts of the island around 1780.
Various land owners produced estate maps of their property and it was William Edgeworth, who had been involved in the Bogs Commission survey, that produced a trigonometrical survey of Co Longford and part of Roscommon. With him, 'native Irish cartography attained a new high level'. Alexander Nimmo, for the same survey, produced a comprehensive map of the Kerry region in 1811.
In 1824 the six-inch Ordnance Survey mapping of Ireland was begun under Thomas Colby. As a consequence the surveyors were the first group to systematically get to all the significant mountain summits on the island.
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| Principal triangulation with dates. |
Much discussion took place as to the merits of contour lines or hachuring to represent altitude and slope and it was not until about 1890 that the complete hill edition was produced.
A full account of the operation and proceedings of the OS in 19th Century Ireland is given by
JH Andrews in A Paper Landscape.
Thomas Colby was the director of the OS in Ireland and John O' Donovan played
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| John O'Donovan |
an important role in the toponymical aspects of the survey. 'The OS made a crucial contribution to scholarship. Its work on antiquities, the Irish language and literature was of immense importance because it studied...sources (many for the first time) using the new scientific methodologies of contemporary European scholarship.' G.M Doherty The Irish Ordnance Survey
Of course, the surveyors climbed the mountains for professional reasons rather than for recreation. However, their activities may have had an influence on a generation of people that became interested in the activity of surveying, some of whom carried this interest abroad to Europe and North America and carried out surveys of their own in these places. Among such people were John Palliser, Anthony Adams Reilly, Edward Oliver Wheeler and there will be more about these to follow.
A fascinating 'biography of the Ordnance Survey' is Map of a Nation by Rachel Hewitt (Granta, 2010)
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| Bryce. Wikipedia |
A notable feature of the people undertaking this activity was that they were wealthy. It required substantial financial resources to travel to the Alps, spend at least a couple of weeks there and to hire the necessary porters and guides to undertake expeditions that may have lasted for a number of days. John Tyndall's initial foray to the mountains may have been an exception because he 'got by very cheaply' but that was before he did 'serious' climbing.
The local people who climbed summits did so mainly at the behest of the 'wealthy tourists' who employed them as guides and porters because their knowledge and experience gained through hunting and other activities.
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| Russell. Wikipedia |
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| Cotter |
Many of the 'summiteers' wrote of the experiences and the result was that the interest in climbing mountains spread to many other regions in the years following the Golden Age. Some of the Irish who were involved in the second half of the 19th Century were the following and not all were wealthy:
James Bryce in many places
Henry Russell in the Pyrenees.
William Spotswood Green in Canada and New Zealand.
More about all these to follow.
Politician, diplomat, jurist, political scientist, historian and mountaineer, James Bryce was a man of many parts.
Born in a small terraced house in Arthur Street, Belfast, on 10th May 1838. He spent the first eight years of his life at his grandfather's residence on the shores of Belfast Lough. At age eleven he climbed Trostan from Cushendall and claimed it was the birth and growth of his 'lifelong passion for mountain climbing'. His schooling and academic career were extensive (see here for details). He was widely honoured, receiving the order of merit (1907) and honorary degrees from thirty-one universities, and was president of the British Academy (1913–17).
Bryce became a great mountain walker and climber, and his love of both activities was closely related to his interest in the natural world. In his early youth he spent much of his time in the mountains of Ireland and Scotland. Bryce’s notable experiences of mountain landscape combined with a particular environmentalist sensibility and political liberalism to shape his pioneering ideas about landscape preservation. His mountaineering was important to his personal identity and to his practice as an historian. Bryce’s ideas about history were influenced by an environmentalist perspective on the world, gained through on-foot experience of it.
A slim, wiry man of medium height with a crisp purposeful walk and piercing deep-set eyes, Bryce exuded a sense of energy, liveliness, and movement; his pursuit of knowledge was incessant, his interests ranging over geology, botany, history, politics, law, and philosophy. He carried his great learning lightly and was happy with life's simple pleasures: smoking his pipe, reading, a good walk, or a brisk swim.
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| N Face Mt Bryce. Wikipedia |
From 1862, when he spent a semester in Heidelberg University, he climbed the classics of Switzerland and Italy including Monte Rossa, Streckhorn Monte Pelmo and Marmolata. In 1866, with Leslie Stephen, he climbed in the Carpathians (Monte Csalho). In 1872 he was in Iceland but seems not to have been impressed by the mountains there - 'in Switzerland....the difficulty is getting to the top of your peak. In Iceland it is getting to its bottom', requiring long , tedious journeys. In 1873 he was in the Pyrenees, climbed with Henry Russell, and climbed Maladetta, Vignemale, Pic de Nethou and Canigou. In 1876 he was the first European to climb Mount Ararat in Turkey. In 1878 he was in Tatras in Carpathia and climbed a number of summits. Elected to membership of the Alpine Club in 1879 and its president from 1899 to 1901 (in John Ball's footsteps). In 1889 he was instrumental in the formation of the Cairngorm Club, the oldest and one of the largest hillwalking and climbing clubs in Scotland.
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| Mt Bryce. Wikipedia |
Bryce Canyon in Utah is not named in his honour, but for Ebenezer Bryce.
Mount Bryce in the Canadian Rockies was named in his honour by J Norman Collie in 1898 - the 15th highest peak in British Columbia.
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Arthur Oliver Wheeler was born in Kilkenny (The Rocks, Maddoxtown) on 1st May 1860.
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| The Rocks |
After attending school in Dublin and Galway he spent two years in Dulwich College in London from age fourteen. Emigrating to Canada with his family in 1876 he lived in the town of Colingwood, a port on Lake Huron, until he went to work for the Surveyor General of Canada, Dr Edouard Deville who was pioneering the use of photography as a means of land surveying. Wheeler was to be one of the pioneers in this work.
After qualifying as a surveyor in 1881 he spent some time working in the prairie provinces around Winnipeg and Saskatchewan. He enjoyed travelling by canoe and became an expert in handling the craft and was impressed by the vast lonely spaces of the region - the 'Great Lone Land' as portrayed by William Francis Butler.
In 1885 the North West Rebellion (Riel Rebellion) took place; an armed resistance movement by the Metis, and first nations of Cree and Assiniboine that was suppressed by the Canadian Militia. Wheeler had joined a special Surveyors Corp and was wounded in action.
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| from 'Wheeler' by Esther Fraser |
Their meeting on a westbound train may have inspired Wheeler to use the services of experienced mountain guides in his survey work, carrying heavy photographic equipment on the high, glaciated summits in the Selkirk range. He was thrilled and excited by his first venture on to a glacier. The Swiss guides were employed for the higher climbs but by 1902 Wheeler had mastered the climbing techniques and of thirty five high camera stations only two required the assistance of the guides. He made a number of First Ascents, notably Mt Oliver (8,379ft) and Mt Wheeler (11.023ft). The first was named for his son, Oliver, who accompanied him on the climb and the latter he, without modesty, named for himself!
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| Mt Wheeler. Wikipedia |
The purpose of the two year Selkirk survey was to provide accurate maps and information for the ever increasing number of climbers and explorers in the region. The Selkirk Range was his report of all that was known about every aspect of the range and was published in 1905 and by this time Wheeler was acquiring a distinct reputation among the climbing fraternity.
Through his meetings with some of the renowned visiting mountaineers (particularly Edward Whymper of Matterhorn fame) Wheeler became convinced of the value of a national mountaineering club. Others supported him in this; a countrywide campaign was launched and in 1906 the Alpine Club of Canada was founded. Arthur Wheeler was elected its first President, a position he held (under the title of Managing Director) until 1926. He also acted as editor of the club's Alpine Journal for the twenty years up to 1927. Although others were certainly involved in the club's foundation, it is claimed that "... without Wheeler, Canada would have had to wait a long time for an Alpine Club" In a publication to mark the centenary of the discovery of the Columbia Icefield it is recorded that "the people of Canada owe a special debt to A.O. Wheeler for the important role he played in expanding the boundaries of Jasper National Park to include a large part of the Columbia Icefield."
In the winter of 1907/8 Arthur visited Europe. He attended the Alpine Club's Jubilee celebration dinner in London and went on to make his only recorded climb in Swiss Alps. He also took the opportunity to visit the place of his birth and took a stroll on the banks of the River Nore at his childhood home. In the following years he disposed of his remaining property in Kilkenny thus severing the last direct link with this country and setting his roots firmly in Western Canada.
He continued his work with the Alpine Club of Canada for some years after his retirement. He died in 1945 in Banff, British Columbia, where he rests in Banff cemetery among the mountains he loved.
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| Wheeler home near Banff, before demolition. |
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| Courtesy: Whyte Museum, Banff |
The earliest record of a technical rock climb seems to be that of John Tyndall in 1860 when he climbed Eagle Rock (probably the Eagle's Nest) near Killarney. The climb was carried out against the advice of his guides who claimed it 'was impossible'. He claims that: '... these guides and boatmen are fine, hardy fellows, and of great endurance, but they appear averse to trying their strength under new conditions', so these Kerrymen were unwilling to try a bit of rock-climbing.
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| Eagle Rock Courtesy NLI |
There is a somewhat earlier account in the Dublin University Magazine (1853) of what has been recounted as a climbing event. On examination it appears that the event was where a man was lowered by rope down a cliff or rock-face on Sliabh Snaght, in Donegal, to get access to an eagle's nest. No actual climbing was involved - he was hauled back up the face with the eagle chicks in his pockets - even though it was claimed that the same man had ascended Pieter Botte mountain in Mauritius, alone and with the aid of a rope.
In 1895 the Irish Times reported that '
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| Powerscourt |
In the eary years of the 20th century a number of people indulged in the activity. Many of these were members of the Dublin (United) Arts Club and their activities will be examined in future posts.
Calvin Torrans (IMEHS Journal Vol 2)has provided a detailed account of the history of Rock-climbing from the 1940s to 80s and this will be looked at in due course.
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