17th Century
"To the famous course at Kildare, the Irish Newmarket, for hunting and horse racing where we spent all Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at these sports, out early and late… admirable good sport…"
Colonel Edward Cooke to Lord Bruce 12 November 1662
The 17th Century saw the emergence of racing as an organised and planned activity despite it being a turbulent period in the history of England and Ireland. In Ireland the ‘great rebellion’ of 1641 was the first major uprising since the submission of Hugh O’Neill in 1603. Oliver Cromwell’s revolt and the arrest and execution of Charles I convulsed England. Cromwell’s pursuit of his war in Ireland had devastating consequences, and the puritans, needless to say, were not inclined to encourage sport or wagers of any kind.
After Cromwell’s death in 1658, Charles II, the ‘Merrie Monarch’ was restored to the throne. He passed an Act of Parliament which saw the first race run under written rules the Town Plate at Newmarket in 1666. ‘Horses in Ireland are a drug, but might be improved to a commodity, not only of greater use at home but also fit for exportation into other countries... We see horses bred of excellent shape and vigour and size as to reach excellent prices at home and encourage strangers to find the market here ‘.
In his Essay Upon the Advancement of Trade in Ireland’ (July 1673) Sir William Temple wrote the first recorded proposals for the systematic improvement of Irish horses by the setting up of institutions which would set standards for stallions and oversee the running of race meetings and horse fairs. The races were to be held at a fixed time every year with each race having two plates given by the King, one of thirty pounds and the second of twenty pounds, open only to horses bred in Ireland, ‘evidenced by good testimonies’. Two judges of the field would be appointed to settle all controversies and declare the winners by sounding a trumpet. Thus emerged a template for the conduct of racing which continues to this day - suitably bred horses competing for prizes under a code of rules regulated by appointed judges.
Of course racing had taken place in various formats long before Temple’s time, although unregulated by modern standards. In 1665 Lord Deputy Essex attended a race meeting in Sandymount, Dublin, attended by a crowd of 5,000, and granted a plate for the victors. Match races, where two owners pitted their horses against each other, were common and one such event, in 1634 on the Curragh, records that The Earl of Ormond’s horse beat Lord Digby’s horse over a four mile course. The Curragh had a full-time Ranger, Simon Allen, from 1687-1688.
Down Royal racecourse was granted a Royal Charter by James II in 1685 ‘to encourage racing and breeding’, making it the oldest racing institution in the country. The Byerley Turk, one of the Foundation Sires of modern thoroughbred racing, won the ‘Silver Bell’ in Down Royal in 1690 and later went on to take part in the battle of the Boyne ! This brown charger had been captured in battle by Capt Robert Byerley, serving in Hungary under William of Orange in 1688. Following William’s defeat of James the Penal laws soon followed, with punitive restrictions on the ownership of land and horses by the ‘native’ (Catholic) Irish.
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18th Century
The eighteenth century gave rise to thoroughbred racing in the form we recognise today. The dramatic arrival of the Byerley Turk was now matched by the arrival of the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian. The Darley Arabian was ‘acquired’ by Thomas Darley, the British Consul to Aleppo in Syria, from a Bedouin Sheikh, arriving in England in 1704. The Godolphin Arabian, originally a tribute from Tunisia to the King of France, arrived in England in 1729. These three horses were to be the main players in the creation of the modern thoroughbred racehorse.
‘The highlights of 18th Century racing were the King’s Plates, of which the number increased steadily. Confined to Irish-bred horses and run under a carefully laid-down set of rules enacted in 1717, there were no fewer than a dozen such races, each worth 100 guineas, run for at the Curragh each season.’ – Tony Sweeney, ‘The Horse in Ireland’, Pelham Books, 1967.
In November 1749, the Honourable Society of Sportsmen, following upon sundry sporadic meetings first noticed in 1747, formalised a dinner reunion every fortnight at the Rose and Bottle in Dublin’s Dame Street and with the inauguration of a race for members at the first Curragh Meeting in 1750 laid the foundations for a Regulatory Authority for Irish Racing. There would be various changes of name before it adopted The Turf Club title circa 1784 but these alterations were cosmetic rather than substantive. It is a source of pride that two years later like-minded sports men in England got together for the first time at the Star and Garter in London’s Pall Mall and thus was born the Jockey Club. In 1790 the first volume of the Irish Racing Calendar was published by Patrick Sharkey in Dublin..
The first steeplechase ever took place in Cork in the year 1752, from the Steeple of St. John’s Protestant Church in Buttevant to St. Mary’s in Doneraile, 4.5miles (7km) away. It was a two-horse challenge between rivals Blake and O’Callaghan. They raced between the steeples clearing whatever fences and obstacles they encountered and so was born one of the most demanding and exciting contests in sport. Munster can also claim a first in Flat Racing because the oldest English Classic, the St. Leger, was named in honour of Anthony St. Leger, born in Co. Cork.
The demand for racing continued to grow, with large crowds appearing at all meetings. The races in the village of Crumlin, just outside Dublin, attracted large assemblies leading to ‘dissipation, club-law and tumult’ according to the Freeman’s Journal, which demanded that the law should
stop such meetings. Ironically many magistrates obligingly acted as Stewards at these very meetings. Later in the century the fear of ‘unlawful assemblies’ so close to Dublin city (The French Revolution and the rise of the United Irishmen concentrating minds ) led to the suppression of the Crumlin races. By 1791 an Act ‘to prohibit horse races in the neighborhood of the city of Dublin’ received the Royal assent and became law.
The times were indeed becoming dangerous and Thomas Connolly ‘the Father of the Turf Club’, a significant Landowner and member of Parliament for Derry received correspondence from Lord Londonderry wishing him’ better success among your tenantry in arming for the defence of our lives than I have had as yet with mine’ In 1798 the June races were not held on the Curragh ‘owing to the disturbed state of the country ‘.
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19th Century
Royal Plates were the principal prizes in Irish racing in the 19th Century , a custom designed for the improvement of breeding and the growing commerce of horse sales, greatly extending the 18th century practice when such races were mainly run at the Curragh.
Royal Plates were also awarded at different times to:
Bellewstown (since 1808)
Down Royal
Londonderry (up to 1836, there-after 1861-1877)
Limerick (1868 only)
Cork Park (transferred from Limerick 1869)
Galway (transferred from Londonderry in 1879)
1860s – 17 Royal Plates in Ireland: Curragh 13, Down Royal 3, Bellewstown 1.
1900 – Curragh 10, Down Royal 2, Bellewstown, Cork Park and Galway 1 each.
1902 – Curragh 10 reduced to 4 at increased value, others increased by £5 each –
1915 – total value of Irish Royal Plates – £1,562
Bellewstown, in County Meath, was a remarkable example of the vitality of Irish racing at the time. The course had its first race ‘under rules’ in 1805 and by 1808 a King’s Plate of 100 Guineas had been secured. It drew gentry and commoners to the magnificent plateau of Crockafotha with commanding views of the sea to the East and the town of Drogheda to the North with Carlingford and the Mountains of Mourne beyond. It received the ultimate accolade of the people, a record in verse:
Oh! Its there near the haycocks, all splendid like paycocks,
In chattering groups that the quality dine,
Sitting crossed-legged like tailors,
the gentlemen d’alers
In flattery spout and come out mighty fine.
And gentry from Navan and Cavanare havin’
‘Neath the shade of the trees and Arcadian quadrill
All we read in the pages of pas-toral ages
Tell of no scene like this upon Bellewstown Hill
But hark! There’s a shout, the horses are out
‘Long the ropes on the stand, what a hullabaloo!
To ould Crock-a-fotha the people that dot the
Broad plateau around are all for aview.
Come! Ned my tight fellow, I’ll bet on the yellow,
‘Success to the green’, faith, we’ll stand by it still
The uplands and hollows they’re skimming like swallows
Till they flash by the post upon Bellewstown Hill.
The visit by King George IV to the Curragh in 1821 was an occasion of great excitement £3,000 was raised to erect a new stand and marquees were installed for the masses. The King presented The Royal Whip, with a handle covered in finely wrought solid gold shamrocks, to the Curragh one of the finest trophies in racing. He said: ‘ I intend this whip to be presented to the owner of the best horse in Ireland weight for age....and ,as I wish to encourage the breed of strong horses in this country you will take care to make the weights very heavy and that no horse younger than four years shall be permitted to run for it’.
In the famine years many landlords were blind to the suffering of the people and continued at their pleasures undisturbed. There were exceptions, and racing held up at least one shining example in George Henry Moore (1810-1870) a celebrated rider and owner. His horse Coranna, won the Chester Cup in 1846 along with £10,000 in bets, an extraordinary sum of money at that time. He sent the money back to his estates in Mayo and stopped racing during and for a long period after the famine.
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20th Century
Irish Flat and National Hunt achievements in the 20th century are covered in more detail in the 'Through the Decades' and 'Profiles' sections (see links at the top of this page). Here we look at just two giants of the game who raised its ambitions from the local to the global: ‘Boss’ Croker and Joe McGrath spanned the century, linked by Glen-cairn and the English and Irish Derbys.
Richard Eyre Croker was a larger than life Irish American who dominated Democratic Party politics in New York City’s Tammany Hall .The child of a family who had fled the famine in 1846 he fought his way from the streets to the halls of power. On his return to Ireland he rebuilt Glencairn in Sandyford, Dublin and established a stud there. He moved Orby from the Curragh to train there under James Allen and Lt-Col Freddie MacCabe, his racing manager. When he set his sights on the Epsom Derby, support for Orby became a National cause which was heightened when a decidedly sniffy English press rubbished his pretensions. “The turf in Ireland has no spring in it, the climate is too depressing, and no Irish trainer knows enough to even dare to compete for the greatest race in the world.” – William Allison, The Sportsman.
Orby won the Derby, beating Wool-winder, owned by Col E. W. Baird, one of the Stewards who had banned Croker’s horses from being trained in Newmarket. Orby was awarded the Freedom of Dublin and MacCabe was famously accosted by a Dublin shawlie: “Thank God and you, sir that we have lived to see a Catholic horse win the Derby!”
Croker offered to fund the Irish Derby to the same value as the Epsom Derby, on condition he be elected to the Turf Club, to no avail. Orby was entered for the Irish Derby against MacCabe’s advice to avoid the ‘rock hard’ ground, but Croker was adamant: ‘The Irish racing public should see their national hero in action on his home ground’. Orby duly hacked up at 10/1 on. Croker had his way, but at a price. Orby ran once more, finishing last of four at Liverpool in July. Later the Irish Field reported: “Orby has sprained the sub-carpal ligament of his off fore-leg, which practically amounts to a break-down and so all question of his running in the St Leger is set at rest.”
The following year Croker and James Allen won the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket (likewise an Irish-trained first) with Rhodora, Orby’s half-sister.
It was a long wait for the next Irish Epsom Derby winner (albeit English-trained and English-ridden) – Joe McGrath’s Arctic Prince in 1951, the year Irish-breds won four of the five English Classics. McGrath was also a huge figure, both in stature and in personality. From paper boy to accountant, along the way he acted as ‘Big Jim’ Larkin’s minder during the bitter General Strike of 1913, fought in the Rising, was elected to the first Dail and became Minister for Labour in the first Free State Govt. On leaving politics he lobbied for, and won, a licence to co-found the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes in 1930, mak-ing a fortune from the only legal sweepstakes in the world.
A founder member of the Irish Racing Board (forerunner of the IHA and Horse Racing Ireland), which finally stabilised Irish racing’s finances in 1946, Joe McGrath made his greatest contribution to Irish racing when he succeeded where ‘Boss’ Croker, his predecessor in Glencairn, had failed. He persuaded the Turf Club to accept sponsorship of the Irish Derby whereby the inaugural Irish Sweeps Derby in 1962 became the richest Derby in the world.
References:
In preparing the History of Racing 17th-20th Century, extensive reference was made to
• Horses Lords and Racing Men, Fergus D’Arcy, (the Turf Club, 1991)
• The Sweeney Guide to the Irish Turf 1501-2001, Tony Sweeney (De Burca 2002)
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