Pearse Park or Pearse's Park, () is an GAA stadium in

Arklow Arklow (; ; , ) is a town in County Wicklow on the southeast coast of Ireland. The town is overlooked by Ballymoyle Hill. It was founded by the Vikings in the ninth century. Arklow was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the 1798 re ...

County Wicklow County Wicklow ( ; ga, Contae Chill Mhantáin ) is a county in Ireland. The last of the traditional 32 counties, having been formed as late as 1606, it is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and the province of Leinster. It is bordered by t ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. It is the home of the

Wicklow Wicklow ( ; ga, Cill Mhantáin , meaning 'church of the toothless one'; non, Víkingaló) is the county town of County Wicklow in Ireland. It is located south of Dublin on the east coast of the island. According to the 2016 census, it has ...

hurling Hurling ( ga, iománaíocht, ') is an outdoor team game of ancient Gaelic Irish origin, played by men. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goals, the number of p ...

and

camogie Camogie ( ; ga, camógaíocht ) is an Irish stick-and-ball team sport played by women. Camogie is played by 100,000 women in Ireland and worldwide, largely among Irish communities. A variant of the game of hurling (which is played by men onl ...

teams. The ground has a capacity of about 5,000.

History

Pearse name and redevelopment

The ground is named after both the Pearse brothers executed in 1916;

Patrick Pearse Patrick Henry Pearse (also known as Pádraig or Pádraic Pearse; ga, Pádraig Anraí Mac Piarais; 10 November 1879 – 3 May 1916) was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, writer, nationalist, republican political activist and revolutionary who ...

and

Willie Pearse William James Pearse ( ga, Uilliam Seamus Mac Piarais; 15 November 1881 – 4 May 1916) was an Irish republican executed for his part in the Easter Rising. He was a younger brother of Patrick Pearse, a leader of the rising. Background Willie ...

. It is believed that the ground was redeveloped around 1965.

Former use

Before the ground was redeveloped it was a

greyhound racing Greyhound racing is an organized, competitive sport in which greyhounds are raced around a track. There are two forms of greyhound racing, track racing (normally around an oval track) and coursing; the latter is now banned in most countries. Tra ...

track known as the Arklow Greyhound Track. The track raced under Irish Coursing Club rules and opened on 30 July 1949 but the Arklow Greyhound Racing Company was fined in 1949 for failing to stamp admission tickets and failure to produce a register. In 1951 landlord William Smyth sued the company for £375 unpaid rent & £1,300 under a covenant of the lease. The company counter claimed for £4,200 stating that payments had been made to Mr Smyth but they lost the case. The 13 acre, 2 rood, 16 perches site complete with grandstand was then put up for auction in 1953 and again in December 1954. With no buyer due to the government refusing licensing the site went to auction again on 31 May 1956. Another application for re-opening in 1958 was refused because the nearby

Enniscorthy Greyhound Stadium Enniscorthy Greyhound Stadium is a greyhound racing track located on the west side of Enniscorthy Enniscorthy () is the second-largest town in County Wexford, Ireland. At the 2016 census, the population of the town and environs was 11,381. T ...

track objected. The Royal Bank Ltd acquired the site and auctioned it off for a last time on 25 March 1958 as freehold land. An injunction a year later stopped Mr Smyth from removing items from the track after he had removed the mechanical hare rail, kennels and windows. Some locals still call the venue the old dog track.

Other uses

There is an

Irish language Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...

secondary school located on the grounds, ''

Gaelcholáiste na Mara Gaelcholáiste na Mara is a secondary school located in Arklow, County Wicklow, Ireland, which was founded in 2007. It is run by the Kildare/Wicklow Education and Training Board (KWETB). At a ''Gaelcholáiste'' the pupils are taught through t ...

''.

References

External links