Famine-era manuscript nets €1,600

A rare manuscript documenting Famine-era cricket in Ireland sold at Sheppard’s auction in Durrow, Co Laois, yesterday for €1,600.

The winning bid was submitted jointly by local hoteliers Shelly and Peter Stokes and Laois Cricket Club, who beat off competition from a telephone bidder in England.

The journal documents the activities of the Ashbrook Union Cricket Club – for the years 1846 to 1848 – and was found dumped in a builder’s skip in Co Kildare.

The club was founded by Durrow’s landlord, Viscount Ashbrook, for the local Protestant gentry, but the records show a shortage of players meant local Catholic men were hired and paid to supplement the team.

Shelly Stokes said the journal would go on display in her hotel, Castle Durrow – the former home of Viscount Ashbrook – and she was “delighted it is staying in Ireland”. The Ashbrook family left Ireland in 1922 when the banks foreclosed on debts during a previous credit crunch and the estate was sold off to local farmers by the Land Commission. The title lives on in England.

Ms Stokes plans to invite the current (and 11th) Viscount Ashbrook – Michael Llowarch Warburton Flower – and his son, the heir apparent, the Hon Rowland Francis Warburton Flower, to Co Laois later this year. The Ashbrook family today live at Arley Hall in Cheshire.