Irishman's Diary

To have had a grandmother who was born nearly 200 years ago is surely unusual - and that's the case with my father's mother, …

To have had a grandmother who was born nearly 200 years ago is surely unusual - and that's the case with my father's mother, Mary Anna Pilkington.

She was born in the then Royal Barracks, Dublin, on January 11th, 1803, just five years after the death of Wolfe Tone in the same building. Her father was Colonel William Pilkington of the 7th Welsh Fusillers, who had married a Miss Wainhouse of Tremadoc, North Wales. The Pilkington family home was at Tore, near Tyrrellspass.

Mary Anna was the eldest of the 14 children of the marriage and she outlived all the others. Her father and nine of his brothers went through the Peninsular War under the Duke of Wellington, William Pilkington himself being invalided out of the army at the time of the Battle of Waterloo. Mary Anna well remembered news of the victory arriving, when she was aged 12.

Family motto

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The Pilkingtons had come to Ireland in the late 17th century from Paledown, Yorkshire. An ancestor fought for King Harold against William the Conqueror's Norman army at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. When the Saxon cause was lost on the field, he escaped the enemy sword by disguising himself as a grass cutter and slipping away unharmed. from this came the family motto: "The Pilkingtons of Paledown, the master mows the meadow."

In February, 1907, my father wrote a very colourful description of his mother and her doings and the following are excerpts:

"Dear Mother was educated at Reading and showed vast ability in all branches of English and a great taste for languages, speaking, at one time, six, viz: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Hindustani. She was of very elegant figure and though not as beautiful as some of her sisters, was most fascinating - had very black hair and the famous Pilkington complexion.

"At about 25, she left England and, not being in very good circumstances, became for years a governess in some of the best French and Swiss families, amongst [them] the De Rougemonts of La Chadeau at Thoune. With these and some others she became a life-long friend. She was engaged to and very nearly married a notable French architect, a Monsieur Lapret, a Roman Catholic; but her uncle sent her to India to render this union impossible and on the 14th February, 1839, at Colaba near Bombay, she, at the age of 36, married my father, William Glasgow Dunlop, Superintendent of the Bombay Harbour Water Police."

There were two children of the marriage, a girl, Mary Susan Elizabeth, and my father, Henry Wallace Doveton Dunlop, who was born in India in February, 1844. Alas, tragedy was not far off for my grandfather: a servant of the East India Company, it appears that he was drowned in an accident at Bombay round about 1850. My father continues in his memoir of 1907:

Trip to Tasmania

"When my sister and I were eight and 41/2 respectively Mother brought us home to Plymouth and left us in the care of Mrs Cookworthy and returned for two years to her husband (going by sail round the Cape, a five month journey, five times in all). She then came to us and took us for five years to Germany and four to France, where we learned both languages. She then brought us to Ireland where she has never been out of reach of either of us until the day of her death: May 6th, 1902, at my house, 41 Belgrave Road, Dublin, at the splendid age of 99 years and four months. To the last her intellect was quite clear, though her sight and hearing had almost left her. "At the age of 83 she went to Tasmania and back and at the age of 98 recited and sang She wore a wreath of roses, Kathleen Mavourneen, and the Marseillaise. She had great artistic talents (I have many of her sepias, watercolours and drawings). She worked and sewed beautifully and taught all my dear children to read and write. She was a warm-hearted and devoted Christian Mother."

My father never recorded the date or details of his own father's death. After the loss of her husband and her return to Europe, Mary Anna Dunlop would seem to have occupied the five years in Germany and the four years in France by resuming work as a governess and thereby earning a livelihood. She would have come back to Ireland about 1859/ 1860. Her elder child, Mary Susan Elizabeth Dunlop, married a Mr Harrison and a son of that marriage, Seymour, was well-known as a good hockey and tennis player in Dublin in the early 1900s.

Her younger child, Henry Dunlop, my own father, was destined to have as interesting a life as his mother. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, with an engineering degree in the late 1860s. As a student, he was Irish champion track-walker and on Friday, June 11th, 1869, he won the Provost's Cup at the Trinity Sports for a race of seven miles, covering the distance in 1 hour 3 minutes and 11 seconds. I have the official programme for the occasion and also the Stuart tartan belt that he sported with such distinction.

Lansdowne Road

Leaving Trinity with a great zeal for sport, Henry Dunlop founded the Irish Champion Athletic Club in 1872 and, with the Provost's approval, held the club's first meeting at the College Park. The board of the college subsequently expressed disapproval of this decision and banished Dunlop and his club to less hallowed ground. My father was small in stature, but large in energy and determination. Soon he found another venue. This was the swampy ground enclosed by the bend in the Dodder river below Lansdowne Road railway station. A lease from the Earl of Pembroke followed and very quickly Henry Dunlop had the area enclosed and prepared. He laid down a cinder running track for athletics as well as providing for such diverse sports as tennis, archery, cricket, croquet and last, but not least, for rugby football, the Lansdowne Football Club.

The rest is sporting history.