Chip shop first past post for fictional donkey derby poster

Customers at one of Cork’s most famous chip shops can soon take their pick from the runners and riders in a fictional local race card from more than a century ago.

The 1898 poster for donkey and pony races around The Lough on the city’s southside was bought at auction for the Jackie Lennox outlet on Bandon Road. It is just a few hundred yards from the suburban lake where the poster purported there was to be a race meeting on Sunday, Feb 27, of that year.

The two-foot poster was the design of an elaborate local joker, Murty Downey, who played hurling for the nearby St Finbarr’s hurling club around that time.