By Bernard Murphy

It is not generally known that the writer of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, has strong links with both Lismore and Ballyduff. He was a regular visitor to Ballygally (near Glencairn) and to Ballyin (near to the golf course) on the other side of the river. Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (to give him his full name) was a Scottish-born physician and writer who although mainly famous for his detective Sherlock Holmes stories, which are generally considered as milestones in the field of crime fiction, was also a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction, plays, romances, poetry, non fiction and historic novels.

He was born on May 22 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father Charles, Altamount Doyle, although born in England, was of Irish descent and his mother Mary Foley was born in Co Waterford. It is the Foley connection that links Arthur Conan Doyle to the Lismore/Ballyduff area.

Charles Altamount Doyle, Conan Doyle's father, moved to Edinburgh from London when he was just 17 years of age. He rented a room in a boarding house belonging to Catherine Foley, the Kilkenny born widow of a Dublin Doctor. It transpired that Charles went on to marry Catherine's daughter, Mary Foley, in 1855.

The Doyle family were at one time well-to-do landowners in Ireland in the 18th century, however they were stripped of their estates for continuing to adhere to Irish Catholicism. Arthur Conan Doyle always acknowledged his strong Irish roots and in his autobiography 'Memories and Adventures', written in 1924 he wrote "I, an Irishman by extraction was born in the Scottish capital after two separate lines of Irish wanderers came together under on roof"

His strong links to Ballygally, Glencairn were on his mother’s side, the Foleys, who owned considerable lands in that area. It was to this family that Arthur Conan Doyle's mother Mary turned when her husband Charles became an alcoholic living in a world of self-pity, which resulted in considerable poverty for the Doyle family. During many summers, Mary Doyle brought her children to Ballygally, on holidays paid for by her Foley family. The Ballygally Foleys were obviously generous people, because they also paid for Arthur's education.

At the age of 9 he was sent to Hodder, the junior college for Stonyhurst Jesuit College, Lancashire, near Preston, where he spent 2 years. He spent a further six years with the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College before moving on to another Jesuit college in Austria. It has been speculated that there may have been a previous connection with the Jesuits and the Foley family life, hence Arthur's second name of Ignatius.

Conan Doyle paid many visits to the Waterford/Lismore area and in 1881, at the beginning of the Land War, he wrote about his sojourns in 'To The Waterford Coast and Along it', a semi- autobiographical photographic essay published in the British Journal of Photography in 1883.

He arrived in Lismore by train, travelling along the newly constructed section of the 'Waterford, Dungarvan and Lismore Railway', known as 'The Duke's Line' due to the patronage of the Duke of Devonshire, who was chairman and major shareholder of the company that built the line. On one such trip to Lismore it is noted that he visited the Church of Ireland Cathedral, possibly staying at the adjoining rectory, before visiting Ballyin and returning to the Foley home at Ballygally House. Descriptions of his visits to the Lismore area can be found in Conan Doyle's only Irish based short story 'The Heiress of Glenmahowley', published in 1884.

Over the years that followed, Conan Doyle had attracted considerable interest from the media in England, Ireland and internationally and in a postcard reply to one enquiry from a Mr E Alan Downey of The Waterford News in 1914, he says "Dear Sir, In answer to a kind query, I never slept in Waterford tho' I have passed through it. I was on a visit to my relations the Foleys of Ballygally nears Lismore. Yours sincerely, A Conan Doyle." Waterford Museum hold the original copy of this postcard, sent from Conan Doyle' home at Windlesham, Crowborough, Sussex.

It was at his home that Conan Doyle died of a heart attack in 1930, aged 71. Confirming his rather unconventional views on life, which he was noted for, he earlier had written, "I desire to die as I have lived, without clerical interference". He was buried in an Anglican churchyard at Minstead, Hampshire where his headstone is inscribed 'Knight, Patriot, Physician and Man of Letters'. He is commemorated by a statue at his birthplace in Edinburgh, not of himself, but of Sherlock Holmes.

One last thing to mention - Sherlock Holmes never actually uttered the words "Elementary, my Dear Watson", Not a lot of people know that, as Michael Caine is supposed to have said, but that's another story.

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