Hurling, Hounds and Hockey - The sporting Meade family of Ballintober and Ballymartle
- Online Journalist
- Dec 17, 2025
- 9 min read
By Fergal Browne
Dr William George Meade
A huge crowd had gathered to watch the procession which carried the neighbouring Ballymartle and Ballinhassig Hurling teams to the Park in Cork. It was the summer of 1890, and an alternative County Championship was under way. The official competition, recognised by the GAA, had been boycotted by most Cork hurling clubs, for political reasons. A separate championship had been organised by Fr. O’Connor, a curate based in The Lough parish in the city, which had seen several games played throughout the year.
As befitted good neighbours, the Ballinhassig and Ballymartle hurling teams had travelled together to the city and paraded in wagonettes (four-wheel horse drawn vehicles) towards the pitch. Unfortunately, no actual report of the match, or the score has survived. However, tempers clearly ran high during the game. It was afterwards reported that:
‘…when Ballinhassig, under T. Forde, came into the Park in the same procession of wagonettes as their opponents, Ballymartle, everything else in Cork City was forgotten. That was not the way they went home! Oh no! With much wisdom Forde brought his men back home via the Lough Road, while Dr. Meade thought it safer for his team to reach Ballymartle by way of Kinsale Road’
The Dr Meade referred to here was Dr William George Meade – and it may be considered unusual to see him as Captain of a hurling team in 1890, as he hailed from a gentry family, the Meades of Ballintober House.
Dr Meade’s branch of the family had come to Ballintober when his great-great uncle had purchased it from his cousin, Sir John Meade, 4th Baronet of Ballintober and 1st Earl of Clanwilliam, in 1788. However, the Meades had been in Cork since at least the 14th century, giving their name to the townland of Meadstown, near Ballygarvan, where the family had a castle. One of Dr. William’s ancestors, Robert Meade, had been Sovereign of Kinsale in 1689 when King James II landed there on his way to do battle with William of Orange. Despite being the son of a clergyman himself, Dr William’s father, John Meade, was a renowned horseman and a prominent member of the South Union Hunt, and his children inherited his sporting gene. It was a sign of the changing times in the late 19th Century that the younger sons of Ballintober all studied medicine, where younger sons of previous generations would have only had the options of the Church or the Army.
William George Meade was the second son born to John Meade and his wife Elizabeth, the older brother, John Josias, would inherit the Ballintober Estate, so William needed to find a means of supporting himself. As a young man, he was friendly with a groom who worked in the stable yard at Ballintober, named Mike Sullivan, with whom he trained and exercised. Sullivan would later emigrate to the United States, where he won the all-round Athletic Championship of America. Meade first competed in a race in Cork in 1880. In this race he competed with Tom Malone of Ennistymon, Co. Clare, who held several Irish sprint records at the time.
This was a time when the lifestyle of the ‘gentry’ was changing, and it was not uncommon for a son of the ‘Big House’ to follow a profession such as medicine, which would have been unusual for previous generations, where careers tended towards the army or the church. Meade entered Queens College Cork (now UCC) to study medicine, and it was here that he competed in his first proper competition. In 1882 he won the 440 yards sprint, the 880 yards (half mile) and the 150 yards race at the College Sports. In the same year at the Cork Amateur Athletics Club Sports, he won the pole vault with a height of 10 feet, 4 ¾ inches as well as other competitions on the day.
In 1883 at another event, he won, among other competitions, the High Jump, clearing 5 feet 5 inches. In Dublin later that year at the Championship sports he won the half mile, beating two of the most celebrated athletes of the day, John E Hussey of Tralee and Walter J Hogg of Dublin. He still features on ‘Athletics Ireland’s’ Roll of Honour for his 1883 half mile victory. Immediately after that race had finished, he competed in the pole vault, coming second, to the surprise of all spectators who had not given him a chance given he had just finished (and won) a half mile race immediately beforehand.
Meade played Rugby for the newly formed Munster provincial team, which held amateur status at that time. He captained the Queens College Cork Rugby team in 1884 – this was obviously before the GAA ban came in on playing other sports. This was just as well, as in the late 1890’s he also recorded as captaining the Kinsale Gaelic Football team.
Meade also played tennis, as well as hunting and shooting. He completed his medical studies in the University of Edinburgh and later became Dispensary Doctor for Ballymartle, where he attended most of his house calls on a bicycle. He would later record that he cycled approximately 5,000 miles in a year which discharging his professional duties. In his role as Dispensary Doctor, he would also have served as registrar for the district, so anybody researching the ancestry for Ballymartle will find his name signed on the birth and death certificates of their ancestors. He lived at Durah Cottage, close to the family home of Ballintober.
Robert Meade
Dr. William’s younger brother, Robert Meade, was also a keen sportsman, and appears to have worn the Ballymartle jersey on the hurling field, if an old Ballymartle hurling poem is to be believed. It contains the verse:
‘Success to you, young Bobbie Meade, A volunteer came in, I hear you are an honour and a credit to our men. You played the game right manfully, I can hear the people say. And good help to bring the laurels, from Cork Park to Kinalea’
An interview that Robert Meade gave to the Skibbereen Eagle in 1901 mentions that both he and his brother Dr. William were both ‘excellent wielders of the camán’, and that ‘neither were above participating in our National Game’.
Like his brother, Robert also studied medicine at Queens College Cork and carried on the family tradition of hunting. In 1899 he went to South Africa, where he joined the Cape Mounted Police a month before the Boer War broke out. He was in the country when a Kinsale man, Nicholas Walsh, became one of the first British casualties of the war. Meade was part of the British force based in Kimberley, which was besieged by the Boers for 124 days. He recounted that in the last 7 weeks of the siege, each man had to survive on half a pound of horse meat, ten ounces of bread and a small amount of coffee. Later in the war, Robert Meade was severely injured when a wall beneath which he was sleeping collapsed upon him. He suffered a fractured skull and a sprained wrist. Being 75 miles from the nearest hospital, one of his men bandaged his wounds while following Meades own instructions. He spent a week in a Dutch farmers house before being invalided back to Kimberly and from there back to Ireland, where he told the journalist from the Skibbereen Eagle that he was again ‘as fit as in the old days of Rugby Football and Student Life’.
The youngest of the 4 sons of John Meade, George Waller Meade, also became a medical doctor and was also a renowned rugby player. He took a post as a ship’s surgeon and while on a visit to New Zealand met a local girl there and decided to stay. He spent some time as a doctor in a tough gold mining area, (where he once had to give medical evidence in a murder case), but his sporting career came to a premature end following an accident.
Alice Meade – Kinsale Hockey team
It was not only the sons of the Meade family of Ballintober that were noted for their sporting abilities. In 1899, one of their sisters, Alice Meade, was a member of the newly formed Kinsale Hockey Team. Very little can be discovered about the hockey club in Kinsale in the 1890’s, however from surviving photos it appears that there were a ladies’ team and a junior team. The Ladies team played one match that was recorded in a newspaper for posterity, against Lansdowne in Dublin and it was played on that team’s home grounds. The team consisted of the Misses Hall, two Pratt sisters, E. Walker, Laetitia Knolles (of Oatlands near Belgooly), two more Knolles sisters, and two Stanley sisters. Alice Meade played as a ‘full’ partnering two members of the Knolles family while her cousin Louisa Meade from Ballymartle House played in goal. It is not recorded who won the match, but Ms. Walker’s husband, Captain Thomas Walker RN, was there and photographed the start. The ladies of the Meade families of both Ballintober and Ballymartle were also keen tennis players. Elizabeth Meade, sister of Louisa of Ballymartle House kept a diary for the year 1884 in which she recorded playing at Kinsale Tennis Club, as well as numerous tennis parties at the various ‘Big Houses’ in the area, including one at Timoleague Castle which she described as ‘a very stupid affair’.
In her diary, Elizabeth Meade also recorded her brothers Richard (later known in the locality as Major Meade, and who lived at Ballymartle House until 1953) and Adam walking to Kinsale from Ballymartle to see a football match, although whether this was Gaelic Football or Rugby was not recorded. Adam Meade, as a younger brother, followed the family tradition of that generation in studying medicine. He had attended Tipperary Grammar School as a boarder (now known as the Abbey School, based in Tipperary Town). He was attending that school in 1884 when his sister Elizabeth wrote her diary, and she records his visits home, travelling by train to Ballymartle Station.
While the school was Church of Ireland, it often employed Roman Catholic teachers – including Thomas St George McCarthy, a founding member of the GAA. Therefore, it is likely that Meade and some of his fellow pupils were given an exposure to hurling and Gaelic Football. However, Meade’s first love was Rugby, he paid on the Queens College team. He was substitute Scrumhalf on the Irish Rugby team in the 1890s, though it is unclear if he was ever capped for the team. Adam’s brother Richard inherited the Ballymartle Estate from his uncle, William Richard Meade. His widowed mother had taken the family to live there after her husband had passed away, hence Richard, Adam and their siblings had grown up at Ballymartle. Richard Meade, having served in the army, was a keen huntsman. As well as being a member of the South Union Hunt, he founded his own pack, called the Ballymartle Beagles. He would later fight in the Boer War with an amateur unit called the Irish Hunt Yeomanry. The entire regiment, which consisted of representatives of the ‘Great Houses’ of Ireland, were captured by the Boers in their first engagement and spend the rest of the war in a prison camp.
In Ballintober House, the eldest brother of William, Robert and George – John J Meade, inherited the estate when their father died. When he passed away unmarried in 1943, his will bequeathed Ballintober to his eldest brother – Dr. William. However, Dr William had already passed away by this stage and so his daughter Kathleen Forrest inherited. Relatives of George Waller Meade from New Zealand contested this unsuccessfully in court. Kathleen sold Ballintober and the house was demolished a year later.
It might be considered unusual that an ‘Anglo-Irish’ family would be keenly involved in Gaelic Sports, and the local hurling and football clubs. However, the Meades always considered themselves to be an ancient Irish family, who had merely ‘changed horses’ politically and theologically when it was necessary to hold on to their lands. Indeed, there is a record of a Conradh na Gaeilge concert being held on the land at Ballymartle in 1901 with Major Meade and two of his sisters in attendance. The nationalist historian, Florence O’Sullivan, no supporter of the ‘Ascendancy Class’ said in his ‘History of Kinsale (1916) ‘of this old Kinsale family, the present living representative is the respected and talented Dr. William Meade of Ballintober’. Their sporting process across various codes regardless of class or creed recalls the comment made by the captain of an Offaly hurling club in the 1930’s – a member of the Church of Ireland. When asked by a journalist from the Irish Times if his religion proved an obstacle to his taking part in the game, he responded sharply ‘round here – hurling is the only religion!’
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