Recalling Winston Churchill's visits to Cork 

A letter written on Longueville House headed notepaper five weeks before the opening of Mallow Racecourse on May 30, 1924, is one of 800,000 documents held in the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge.

It was signed by Paddy Longfield, a member of a powerful land-owning family, prominent in the public life of the Blackwater Valley for 300 years.

The handwritten letter began “My Dear Winston” and was friendly in tone, indicating both men were acquainted.

Longfield assured the future British Prime Minister that he would properly treat him or any of his friends if they were interested in acquiring polo ponies or horses.

He assured him he would insist on all purchased horses being examined by the owner’s English vet or by J. T. Clanchy of Charleville, who later served as a veterinary surgeon for meetings at the new riverside racecourse.

There is no known record of any deals having been done, but the letter underlined Churchill’s links with the turf, which began as a child and grew when he was a cavalry subaltern at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst.

He helped to organise point-to-point races, rode in horse and pony races, including a steeplechase, and later became a successful owner and breeder.

Winston lived in Dublin, at what is now Áras an Uachtaráin, from age two to six.

His grandfather, the Duke of Marlborough, was Viceroy to Ireland (1876 to 1880). His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was the duke’s private secretary.

Winston, as the First Lord of the Admiralty in the early years of the last century, attended Cork Park Races during inspection visits to the British naval base at Haulbowline.

On one of those visits, Churchill, regarded as one of the great orators of the 20th century, visited Blarney Castle and kissed the famous stone, which is said to give a person the gift of eloquence.

The Times described how he removed his hat, and with Sir James Long, chairman of the Harbour Commissioners, holding his legs, leaned backward over the parapet and kissed the stone to the cheers of onlookers.

Cork Park Races were first held in 1869 on land leased by the Corporation to Sir John Arnott and others. Some 30,000 people attended the inaugural meeting.

Falling attendances, drainage problems and other issues led in later years to a decline in the fortunes of the track before new management took over.

Relations with the Corporation nosedived, however, when the Lord Mayor’s name was omitted from the list of stewards for three successive meetings in 1911.

The last races were on June 21, 1916.

The land was then acquired by the Ford Motor Company.

It was the end of horse racing in the city, but it led to the opening of a new racecourse in Mallow in 1924, with Colonel F. F. MacCabe as manager.

Located on the town outskirts, the venue had several owners up to 1943 when it was bought by a progressive local farmer William Fahy. He continued to run the racecourse with his family until 1995 when it was purchased by the then Horse Racing Authority.

The venue was upgraded and renamed Cork Racecourse Mallow and remains the only racecourse in Co. Cork, hosting 20 meetings each year.

Winston Churchill, who died in 1965, never attended Mallow Races, which opened two years after the Irish Free State was founded.

But he was familiar with the area, home to the Duhallow Hunt, birthplace of the steeplechase and location of the centuries old Cahirmee horse fair in Buttevant.

His grandfather, the Duke of Marlborough, enjoyed salmon fishing on the Blackwater, sometimes renting Clifford House in Castletownroche or staying in Mallow at the Royal Hotel, now Cork County Council’s divisional headquarters.

Fr Robert Forde, a parish priest of the Cloyne Diocese, writing in Mallow Field Club Journal (1998), relayed an intriguing story about Churchill.

It involved a British politician who had once attended a function in London at which the former Prime Minister was the after-dinner speaker.

The man told an Irish member of the European Parliament that Churchill recalled holidays he had spent around Mallow as a young lad, and how he was on his way back to Dublin on one occasion. As he walked up and down the platform at the railway station, waiting for the train, he noticed there was a clock at each end. One clock showed 8 o’clock and the other 8.30. He met the Station Master and pointed out that the two clocks showed different times. But the man replied that if the two clocks were at the same time “one clock would do us.”

Churchill clearly had happy memories of his early years in Ireland, and these are noted in many biographies.

However, some of his later actions as a political leader left a sour taste among many Irish people.

His role as British Secretary of State for War in sending the Black and Tans to Ireland during the War of Independence in 1920 was bitterly criticised.

And so was his reaction to the State’s neutrality during the Second World War and his attitude to then Taoiseach Éamon de Valera.

However, Churchill assured Ambassador John W Dulanty when they met at a Buckingham Palace reception in 1946 there was not, and never was, any bitterness in his heart towards Ireland.

In May 1951, he told Dr Frederick Boland, who had succeeded Dulanty as Ambassador, that he had a horse, Canyon Kid, running in the Irish Derby at The Curragh.

Apart from a desire to see his horse run, he said he would like to see the Vice-Regal Lodge (Áras an Uachtaráin) once again and wondered how he would be received.

de Valera advised: “Let him arrive and go to the races”, adding that if Churchill had the time to spare, the President or the Government would be happy to entertain him to lunch.

Dr Boland, who conveyed the response to Winston about a week later, in his room at the House of Commons, noted there were tears in his eyes on hearing “this very agreeable message to me.”

Churchill never got to the races at the Curragh, however, because his horse died of heart failure.

But he told Dr Boland he would have liked to have gone over “and I’m sure the people would have given me a good reception – particularly if my horse had won. The Irish are a sporting people.”

Sir Winston won 71 races as an owner in a 15-year career breeding and running horses, including one Irish Classic, the 1,000 guineas in 1955.

His filly, Dark Issue, leased from wealthy Belfast grain merchant William Barnet, was trained at the Curragh by Captain Darby Rogers.

Churchill was again unable to attend, due to a political campaign in Britain.

“The general election was my owner,” he said, “and I was already among the runners.”

The 1,000 guineas result provided a link, however, with the inaugural meeting at Mallow Racecourse on May 30, 1924.

Churchill’s horse was ridden by Phil Canty, whose uncle Joe Canty, seven-times Irish champion jockey, won the first race at the new Mallow track 31 years previously on a horse named Court Picture.

That horse was trained at Springfort Hall, 8km from Mallow, by a man who later moved his stables to the Curragh.

His name was the same as that of another Irishman, who was well-known to Churchill – Michael Collins.