Ploughing ahead in fair and foul weather

Castle Bernard, Bandon, Co Cork, in 1929, Ref: 448A 

The crowds that will flock to The Ploughing in Screggan, Co Offaly, next week will be able to freely move about on the hard surface trackways that are a feature of the event.

But those who attended the 20th national championships in Bandon, Co Cork, 75 years ago, didn’t have the same facilities to cope with the vagaries of the weather during their walkabout.

Unlike the current three-day showpiece, which is held in September, the one-day 1950 championships were held on February 9 at Castle Bernard, a mile and a half outside the town, was the venue for the event which attracted 81 competitors.

Snow fell the previous day as volunteers prepared three fields at the site owned by the Earl of Bandon.

A couple of the tents that had been erected were blown down overnight and the wet and windy conditions continued the following morning.

Thousands of spectators, who flocked to the venue from all parts of the country, helped turn the headlands into a sticky morass.

The conditions delayed the start of the competitions. The horse classes were due to start at 11 am and the tractor section at 12 noon.

But some of the horse ploughs had not turned a single sod by noon and it was 1.30 pm before the tractor events began.

Among the earliest arrivals in Bandon that morning were two English ploughmen, who made a 280-mile overnight trip from Belfast, having competed in Co Antrim the previous day.

President Sean T. O’Kelly was greeted on his arrival by a Garda honour guard while the Army Band of the Southern Command under Comdt. R. B. Kealy played a musical salute.

Wearing rubber boots, the President spent an hour at the event, but even he couldn’t cope with the conditions and had to be lifted by the shoulders when he got caught in the mud.

Teams represented 16 counties in the horse ploughing classes, but ploughmen from 20 counties competed in the tractor events, reflecting the increasing use of mechanisation in Irish farming.

William Kehoe, Wexford, won the senior horse class individual title with Wexford also taking the inter-county honours.

John Butterly won the individual tractor championship for Louth, which also secured the team award.

The logistics of organising the championships less than five years after the ending the Second World War was a daunting task.

It involved months of preparation by an executive committee which sometimes met two and three times a week. J. A. O’Sullivan was chairman with Pat Dinneen as secretary.

Farmers from around Bandon supplied 55 pairs of competition horses, with manes and tails well decorated and harness gleaming from all the polishing. Most of the 43 tractors required were also obtained locally.

A total of 93 ploughing plots had to measured and marked along with space for 90 trade stands. An application from one exhibitor intrigued the organisers as they coped with the snow, rain and slush – it was from an ice cream vendor.

Speaking at a dinner in the Munster Arms Hotel following the competitions, President O’Kelly said he raised his glass to the farmers of Ireland who were the backbone of the country.

“Good tillage is the very foundation of the life of the Irish nation. Everything that any man in a position of authority in this country can do to encourage ploughing and tillage should be done.

“The farmers of Ireland are keeping Ireland going by keeping their families on the land, and you cannot do that unless you till the soil.

“In doing your work, the work of tilling the soil and producing the food for the people of Ireland, you are doing Ireland’s best national service and, incidentally, doing God’s work,” he said.

President O’Kelly, the first Head of State to officially visit the championships, was made two presentations during his visit to Bandon.

On behalf of the organisers, Very Rev. T. Canon Cullinane presented him with an oil painting of the historic Bandon Bridge by local artist W. Keyes McDonnell, a member of the Munster Fine Arts Club.

Fred McMillan, an 81-year-old pensioner from Castle Road, also presented him with a walking stick that he had carved with his left hand because his right hand had been shot off while serving with the United States Army 40 years before.

That night, President O’Kelly presented the awards after National Ploughing Association Secretary J. J. Bergin announced the results on the steps of the specially illuminated Courthouse.