Castlefield, Clonsilla: markings on old maps

Gaspode wrote: »

Looks like a horse training/racing track maybe? A

Classic-winning trainer Sir Hugh Nugent made an offer to move the operation to his establishment at Lohunda Park in Clonsilla (“it’s now a housing estate”) — an offer Bolger grabbed with both hands. He says he would never have moved to the Curragh because the thought of a potential Classic-winner getting loose on the wide open spaces of the Kildare plain was completely anathema.

Bolger stayed at Lohunda until 1982 and mixed his racing enterprises — both national hunt and flat — with equal success (it’s a little known fact that Bolger has two Irish Champion Hurdles under his belt, as well as numerous other successes under hunt rules;

Source: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/being-bolger-6971.html

The Blanchardstown SC and other developments occupy all that farmland now. Horse training was an important source of employment in the area and the trainers who were known to us, included Sir Hugh Nugent in Clonsilla (now Lohunda), who had prolific winners in Dusky Boy and Red Slipper, and Bertie Kerr near Clonee ( near Ongar).

Source: http://www.stbrigidsgaa.com/History/BlastfromthePast-BrigidsHistory/FrankRussell-BrigidsHistory/Title,4363,en.html

When Sole Power blitzed a high class field in the Nunthorpe Stakes at York’s Ebor meeting last August at the eye-popping price of 100/1, his trainer Edward Lynam was catapulted into the limelight. “A typical Dub” as he describes himself, he dealt with it all readily.
Winning a first Group 1 is a significant milestone though, especially when you’ve waited 27 years. In just 57.14 seconds, Lynam became what must surely be the longest overnight sensation ever.

The Dunshaughlin-based handler is, in his own words, an “outsider”, with very little racing pedigree. While his uncles, Jimmy and Eamon O’Connell were trainers, it was the fact that Lynam was born and reared beside Phoenix Park racecourse that was piqued his interest. As a child, he was bitten by the bug.
When he was 12, his father bought Sir Hugh Nugent’s Lohunda Park stables with the intention to develop the property. While waiting to do so, he rented the premises to a newcomer named Jim Bolger, who did very well there before moving to Coolcullen. Lynam had spent time with Bolger learning his trade and took over in 1983.

Source: http://www.daraghoconchuir.ie/blog.php?id=1020