Cashel artisans have a love of their game and their craft

In the stories of the Ulster Cycle, Setanta set off for Emain Macha (in present day Armagh) to become a warrior.
He carried his spear, his javelin and, of course, his favourite hurley. That hurley did not drop from a cloud, nor was it tossed onto the beach by a wave, like some of his later acquisitions. It was made with skill and all due care by an artisan of his time.

Setanta would have chosen his hurley carefully, the weight, the grip and the balance, all intensively assessed. Centuries later in the town of Cashel that process hasn’t changed.
Today’s warriors are just as careful in their selections. “It’s a serious matter picking a hurley,” says Conn Bonnar. “Everything matters. Everything has to be checked and rechecked. There’s a kind of feeling you get when it’s right.”

GREAT SERVANTS
Conn and his brother Ross have been surrounded by hurlers and hurling all their lives. Their family have been great servants to the Cashel King Cormac’s club, and some have played with great distinction for Tipperary. Both brothers have played the game from an early age and when they embarked on their hurley-making enterprise, ‘Bonnar Hurleys,’ they were well positioned to understand the needs of their customers.

When we meet, I am struck immediately by their warmth and their enthusiasm for ‘the great game’ and their craft. These are very young men, twenty-two and twenty-three and buzzing with energy.
“People get very attached to their hurley, almost bonded,” says Ross. “They dread the day it might break, but when you’re in the heat of battle, with your teammates depending on you, the one thing you cannot do is hold back. Naturally, some hurleys are broken and lads or girls come to us with big sad faces and their hurleys in pieces, hoping they can be repaired. Sometimes the news is bad, but often we can fix them and it’s great to see them leave happy.”

COACH HOUSE
As we chat in their kitchen, they point out the hurley prominently displayed above my head. It is a replica of a hurley used in the first All-Ireland Final in 1884. Its shape is very different to the modern hurleys produced by Conn and Ross. Through a window to my right, I see the old Coach House, now the Bonnar Hurley workshop.
We are in the historic Lowergate Street House, home to the Bonnars since 1964. In that year it was saved from demolition by their grandfather who purchased it despite the numerous ghost stories and dilapidation.

After a lot of work, he turned it into a home and moved in with his growing family. It was built circa 1775 and is steeped in history. Over my left shoulder through a second window, the great Rock of Cashel towers over us, and the town.

Conn claims it was he who came up with the idea to start the business.
“A few things seemed to happen all at once,” he says. “I broke three good hurleys in about two weeks, and soon after that broke two more that I had half thrown away. At the same time, lads all over Cashel were saying how hard it was to get hurleys, as the local maker was out of action following a fall from a ladder.” (He recovered by the way!).

GOING INTO BUSINESS
There was definitely a market so Conn decided to make a hurley for himself first, and if that went well, maybe they could go into business.

With a lot of help from an experienced neighbour and the odd YouTube video, the first hurley was a success, so the next step was to persuade Ross that this was a good business opportunity. That proved to be the easiest part of the process and the motion was carried.

Ross tells me that the next decision was crucial. They wanted to bring something different to the design, something practical that would single their hurleys out. I imagine this can’t have been too difficult. This is a family with vast experience of hurling at every level, and whose community have the accumulated knowledge of generations to draw on. There was lots of help from family and neighbours and fairly quickly, the template for the Bonnar hurley was born.

It is still the basis for most of the hurleys they make today, although many clients do ask for alterations. They managed to find suppliers of the ash boards needed and purchased some woodworking machinery. Orders flowed in right away, mostly from the local area and the Bonnar hurley began to appear on the hurling fields of Tipperary.

Mugs of coffee in hand we walk out the back to a line of stone-built, arched buildings. These are as old as the house, and I imagine how many tradesmen and artisans must have used them in their two hundred plus years.
Today, the middle one is the workshop of Bonnar Hurleys. Inside, it is slightly cooler than the garden and a little darker. It smells slightly of earth and dust but more strongly of oil and wood. High in the rafters some swallows have found a temporary home. There is modern machinery here, but most of the tools I see would have been familiar to any of the previous occupants over the years.

SAWDUST EVERYWHERE
There is sawdust everywhere, shavings too, off-cuts and a big pile of ash boards carefully stacked to ensure no warping or twisting takes place. I am a carpenter myself and I love the feel of this place.
“The only problem we have really,” says Conn, “is the shortage of ash in the country at the moment. It’s the same for every hurley maker in Ireland. It’s because of Ash Dieback.”
I had heard of the Ash Dieback disease, but hadn’t realised the scale of the problem. The lads tell me it is usually fatal to the tree, and it is possible that every ash tree in Europe will be infected. Millions of trees have already been lost.

ALL ABOUT THE GRAIN
Only mature trees will do for hurleys, and even then, only the base of the tree is suitable, known in the trade as ‘the butt’. “It’s all about the grain,” says Ross. “At the “butt” the direction of the grain in the wood is suitable, but that grain does not occur higher up the tree.”

Back in the kitchen, I ask about the future of the business and the state of hurling.
“Hurling is in a good place in Cashel at the moment,” says Ross. “Numbers are well up in the club, and big numbers are turning up at training. That’s good news for us. As for the business, there is far more demand than we can cope with, and the last batch of boards we bought will take a few months to season. We have to be very selective taking on new orders. It’s important to keep the quality high despite the difficulty of finding high quality wood. It’s a lot more common recently to find imperfections in the wood, sometimes deep inside. When you’ve almost finished a hurley that’s a sickener, but that hurley cannot be sold.”

LAMINATED BAMBOO
Some experimentation is taking place with alternative materials. The most interesting one being laminated bamboo. “They are actually a fine hurley,” says Conn, “but while the Bas (the part used to strike the ball) is strong, the handles break the same as ash. They would be more popular if they weren’t so expensive, roughly double the price of the ash equivalent.”

It’s time for me to leave but I throw them a final question. What’s the best thing about hurley making, considering business, the work, the whole thing? They answer without hesitation.
“The best thing is the people we meet. They’re a like-minded bunch but all different too. They understand us and we understand them. They all love the hurling, and so do we. No matter where you meet them, auld lads, young lads, boys or girls the conversation always comes back to memories of games, goals, wins, losses and wondering about games still to come.”

It was a heartfelt answer and a good place to end. I have received, not just a lesson in hurley making but a tonic in the form of youthfulness, optimism and enthusiasm. The two are still buzzing as I leave. They have made me very welcome and put me in a good mood. Thank you so much to the Bonnar family and the very best of luck with everything you do. Go n-éirí an bóthar libh.

It is worth noting that when Setanta reached Emain Macha, he went on to become a great warrior. However, despite all of his glories and victories, the story which is best known to most Irish people today is his slaying of the mighty hound of Culann. The great hound was despatched not with his spear or his javelin but with a well-aimed sliotar, struck low and hard with a well-made hurley.

Two books, Artisans of Clonmel and Artisans of Cashel, were published before Christmas.
They were launched as part of Clonmel Applefest and the Cashel Arts Festival. They both carry the stories of craftspeople in the community.
Over the coming months The Nationalist will carry stories from both books. The article for this week was written by Vincent Kiely is a writer and storyteller from Moyne, near Thurles in county Tipperary. He is a lover of what he calls “creative oral storytelling”. He is a member of “The Gab” storytellers in Cork, and of “The Storytellers of Ireland”. He is working on an oral epic called Scéalta na Muimhneach, The Stories of the Munster Men, set in the ancient Irish kingdom of Munster.