Analysis: The first ever steeplechase took place in Cork in 1752, when two huntsmen decided to settle a wager on horseback
By Frances Nolan, UCD
Horse racing has a very long tradition on the island of Ireland, but the sport was conducted exclusively over flat courses until the advent of the steeplechase in the eighteenth century. The first recorded steeplechase took place in County Cork in 1752, to satisfy a wager made by two huntsmen over dinner one evening at Buttevant Castle. The following day, Edmund Blake and Cornelius O'Callaghan met on horseback in the shadow of St John's Church in Buttevant. From there, they raced four-and-a-half miles along the banks of the River Awbeg – clearing hedges, stone walls and ditches – until they reached St Mary’s Church in the town of Doneraile. Run from steeple to steeple, or point to point, the result of the race is no longer known, but the winner was rewarded with a cask of wine.
Blake and O’Callaghan’s contest was an evolution on the "pounding match" – a slower-moving competition, in which two riders progressed across country, selecting obstacles for their horses to jump, until one or other of the animals was "pounded" into exhaustion. The "match" negotiated by Blake and O’Callaghan was much more dynamic, with both men relying on the speed and strength of their horses, as well as their soundness as jumpers. The start and end point of the race was a matter of common sense: a church’s steeple was usually the most visible point on the eighteenth-century landscape, so riders could easily navigate across open country from one point to another.
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From RTÉ Archives, clip from the start of the Buttevant steeplechase in 1954
As the steeplechase grew in popularity in Ireland and Britain, it also began to evolve. While 'matches’ like the one negotiated by Blake and O’Callaghan continued to take place, it became common for obstacles to be included in races. In Ireland, the first such race took place in in 1790, when a 'drag chase of five miles across country’ was run at a meeting in Roscommon. It was in England, however, that the steeplechase began to assume a more modern, formal aspect. The first steeplechase over a prepared track took place at Bedford in 1810 and steeplechase courses were laid out at Cheltenham and Aintree in the 1830s. The first official Grand National took place in 1839, with the Cork-bred and Curragh-trained ‘Mathew’ becoming the first Irish winner of that fabled race in 1847.
By this time, hurdle races (contests run at higher speed, over smaller obstacles and shorter distances) had also become popular, and together with steeplechasing, formed the branch of horse racing known as National Hunt. National Hunt racing was slower to modernise in Ireland. In part, that was because the country lacked a working class that could pay to be entertained, meaning there was little impetus for commercialisation, but it also reflected an attachment to the land and an enduring passion for racing over natural courses. The Kildare Hunt Club organised a steeplechase at Punchestown from 1837, but it wasn’t until 1850 that Punchestown Racecourse opened. The April meeting there quickly became a fixture of the sporting and social calendar, and it was included in the itinerary of the Prince and Princess of Wales during their visit to Ireland in 1868.
The expansion of Ireland’s rail network proved to be a major catalyst for the formalisation of steeplechasing in Ireland. Enclosed courses were opened across the island, including at Fairyhouse in County Meath, Ballybrit near Galway City, and Baldoyle in north Dublin.
As with Flat racing, the men behind the formalisation of steeplechasing in Ireland were drawn from the Anglo-Irish ruling class. Foremost among them was Henry Francis Moore, 3rd marquess of Drogheda. Following the establishment of the National Hunt Committee in England, Drogheda took the initiative to draft a set of rules for Irish National Hunt racing in 1867. Two years later, he took another fateful step, when he asked the owner of the Irish Racing Calendar, Robert J. Hunter, to issue a circular to several lords and gentlemen, to gauge their interest in becoming members of a regulatory body, known as the Irish National Hunt Steeplechase Committee. That committee held its inaugural meeting at Hunter’s home on Adelaide Road in Dublin in December 1870.
The foundations of modern National Hunt racing were laid at the very moment the pillars upholding the Anglo-Irish ruling class began to crack. Horse racing nonetheless survived the devastation of the First World War and the bitter struggle for Irish independence. It endured because it was economically important, particularly as a shop window for Irish bloodstock, but also because it was enormously popular among the Irish public. And it was economic pragmatism and popular passion that ensured its survival on an all-island basis after partition.
As part of the thoroughbred industry, horse racing remains a significant contributor to the Irish exchequer today, but the sport’s importance cannot be measured exclusively in pounds, shillings and pence. It is also about passion and pride. Horse racing – and National Hunt racing in particular – has completely captured Irish hearts across generations and on some of Ireland’s darkest days, its people could look to racetracks at home and in England to find examples of Irish excellence. It is for this reason that Vincent O’Brien remains a towering figure in Irish sporting and cultural memory, and the exploits of Arkle and Dawn Run are still recalled with giddy awe.
And the Irish passion for horses and for the sport they make possible endures. That is because – from the shadow of a church’s steeple in 1752, to the mesmerising spectacle of a modern National Hunt festival – the story of ‘the jumps’ is, at heart, a story of a people, a place and their horses.
Dr Frances Nolan is an SFI-IRC Pathway Fellow and Principal Investigator on the Law versus Practice project at UCD School of History. Her family have a long attachment to horse racing and her book, National Hunt and Point-to-Point Racing in Ireland is published by Four Courts Press.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
