Irish Festival: The seventh Irish Conker Games took place on the last Sunday in October on the village green at Freshford, County Kilkenny.

Those grey, still days of late autumn – “October coloured weather” the poet Patrick Kavanagh called them – provided an incongruous backdrop to the Irish Conker Championships in the north County Kilkenny village of Freshford.

The village itself has been associated with conkers long before the Championships were inaugurated in 1999. 52 horse chestnut trees surround the picturesque village green - their yellowing leaves lightly scattered across the damp grass and pavements.

The Championships are the only one of its kind in Ireland and are largely modelled on the World Conker Championships that take place each year since 1965 in Northamptonshire, England, where the winners from the men’s, women’s and children’s category at Freshford will go on to represent Ireland.

The parallel between this village and conkers soared to new heights when a Freshford man, Eamon Dooley of Dooley’s electrical store, entered the Guinness book of world records in 2002 by smashing 306 conkers in one hour at the World Conker Championships. Eamon destroyed the unofficial record of 47 smashed conkers set the previous year by a Frenchman, hence earning him the local nickname of ‘Eamon the Conquerer’.

In the weeks leading up to the big day, local primary school children are largely responsible for the collecting of the 5,000 odd conkers that are smashed each year during the last Sunday in October.

There is strict protocol that only conkers that have fallen – unassisted – to the ground are suitable to be picked and played, with a ‘most collected conkers’ competition running between the children. Then it will take 6 people 2 days to drill and grade all of the conkers needed for the day.

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