Born in 1775, Rochfort was part of the seventeenth generation to descend from the original de Rochefort settlers and, as such, enjoyed an impressive pedigree in the Anglo-Irish élite. He was named after his great-grandfather, the Hon. Robert Rochfort, speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and his grandfather, John (close friend and legal executor … Read more
Eoin MacNeill (1867–1945) was above all a scholar, a historian of early and medieval Ireland, and an Irish linguist. His call for Irish nationalists to establish a militia in imitation of the Ulster Volunteers (in his article ‘The North began’), and his subsequent command of the Irish Volunteers, was what propelled him into a leadership … Read more
The Irish Cyclist presented a fascinating picture of cyclists in Dublin’s Phoenix Park in May 1896, during the cycling craze: ‘To laze away a few hours in the Phoenix Park one of these fine evenings is delightful; and watching the motley train of cyclists that go by is never tiresome. In the early evening the … Read more
Cycling was a fringe pursuit for most of the period since the first crude form of bicycle, the Draisienne or dandy-horse or hobby-horse, appeared in Ireland in the summer of 1819. For a few months in this year Irish ‘dandies’, like their British and French counterparts, propelled these pedal-less machines around fashionable parks until the … Read more
In November 1897 the editor of the Irish Wheelman, J.C. Percy, surveying recent developments in the cycling trade in Ireland, declared that ‘Cycling has now found its level, which happily is a very high one. It is no longer a fad or a fancy, but an established factor in modern everyday life… The army of … Read more