https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/04/easter-sunday-1888-part-2-of-2.html.
In the following decade, the hurlers of the Tubberadora club won All-Ireland titles for Tipperary in 1895, 1896 and 1898. Such was the legendary status of Tubberadora that their famous blue and gold was later adopted as the county colours of Tipperary. And such was their dominance that Ireland’s leading sports historian Paul Rouse has likened them to Alexander the Great, retiring undefeated ‘with no known worlds left to conquer’: https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/gaa/arid-20419254.html
Boherlahan-Dualla is the name of the GAA club that now covers the old Tubberadora territory.
One of the few photographs of the legendary Tubberadora hurling team
Plaque commemorating the three All-Ireland winning Tubberadora teams
While those late 19th Century hurlers of Tubberadora are immortalised in memory and in (literally) the very fabric of the modern Tipperary jersey, just ten miles south of Tubberadora lived another 19th century Tipperary sporting hero, one who is largely forgotten.
Lena Rice of Marlhill, New Inn, came from a very different background to the Tubberadora hurlers, being Protestant, wealthy and growing up on a large estate. But just like her neighbours from Tubberadora, she also had a brief and glorious sporting career.
Rice first played tennis at home with her family in Marlhill, where they are believed to have ‘entertained lavishly’, and subsequently at the Cahir Lawn Tennis Club. In her first tennis competitions outside of Tipperary she played in the Irish championships in Fitzwilliam in May 1889. There she lost narrowly (7-5, 7-5) in the semi-final to Blanche Hillyard, one of the leading players of the time. Partnered with Hillyard, she reached the doubles final and, with Willoughby Hamilton, she won the mixed doubles final.
Lena Rice
Willoughby Hamilton
Blanche Hillyard
After playing in Dublin, Rice went on to play at Wimbledon in June 1889 where she reached the women’s final, losing out narrowly again to Blanche Hillyard 4-6, 8-6, 6-4. Also of note in the 1899 Wimbledon championships, Lena Rice became the first woman to officiate at Wimbledon.
1890 started with success for Rice in both doubles events at the Irish championships and a singles final defeat to Louise Martin. But in a hint of the success to come later that summer, she went on to win the singles title at Lansdowne.
And then came her crowning glory when, on July 4th 1890 at Centre Court in Wimbledon, Lena Rice beat May Jacks 6-4, 6-1 to become the first and to date only Irishwoman to win a Wimbledon singles final. 1890 turned out to be quite a year for Irish players at Wimbledon, with the aforementioned Willoughby Hamilton becoming the first Irishman to win the singles title and the men’s doubles title being won by Irish duo Joshua Pim and Frank Stoker (a cousin of Bram, the creator of Dracula).
Considering the timing of her Wimbledon victory, coming just a few years from the All-Ireland hurling successes of her near neighbours in Tubberadora, one has to wonder if they had any mutual admiration or even awareness of their sporting achievements, or if their societal and religious differences meant that they lived in 19th century parallel universes.
After her glorious Wimbledon summer in 1890, Lena Rice then quietly disappeared from tennis and never played again, just as the name Tubberadora disappeared from hurling a few years later. Rice was the second youngest of eight children and her father had died young so it may be that, after her mother’s death in 1891, she had to support her family and thus give up on her sport.
The 1901 census records Helena (Lena) Rice, then aged 34, as living in Marlhill with her older sister Caroline. The religion of the sisters is recorded as ‘Church of Ireland’ and their occupation is recorded as ‘Owner of Land and Dividend’. Also in the house on that census night were Mary and Josephine Hally (also sisters, presumably) who were Roman Catholic teenagers and both recorded as ‘Domestic Servant’.
Census record for the Rice family at Marlhill in 1901
By the time of the 1911 census a decade later, there are no Rice family members recorded as living at Marlhill. Lena had died on only her 41st birthday, in 1907. She was never married. Tuberculosis, the cause of her death and the great plague of its day, did not recognise societal divides such as wealth, religion or social class.
In a subsequent link between Lena Rice and her neighbouring hurling heroes, Marlhill was purchased in 1938 ‘by the well known Leahy family of Boherlahan of hurling fame’:
Horse trainer David O’Brien took over the estate in 1983 and I note that it came up for sale again in 2011; https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/tipp-top-marlhill-property-likely-to-attract-lively-auction-interest-26713739.html, by which time the former home of the Rice family, from where they had once ‘lavishly entertained’, was now referred to as ‘a derelict residence’.
Since posting this piece, I have been informed that New Inn Tennis Club holds an annual Lena Rice Tournament - many thanks to Dr. Noreen Keating for this information. Dr. Keating is a leading light of the nearby Kilfeacle Tennis Club and an all-round superstar.
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