Welcome to BADMINTON MUSEUM OF IRELAND.

The purpose of the Badminton Museum of Ireland is to preserve the great heritage of Irish Badminton and to make the general badminton public aware of it.

In this issue the gallery item displays an unusual photograph of Ailesbury Badminton Club members from over 50 years ago. Ailesbury has always been a major club in Irish Badminton. It appeared to be struggling some time ago with a big fall off in membership. I was delighted to hear recently that the Club has got over that bad patch and that the club is now fielding a record number of teams in the Dublin and District Leagues.

Instead of the usual report in the Historical section I am showing a very brief outline of the items that have been donated to the Museum. This gives a good indication of the diversity of the memorabilia and the uniqueness of many of them. The Museum has been promised many more interesting items which will be of help in researching many levels of the game in Ireland. I have no doubt that this is a valuable resource. Regrettably the official side of Irish Badminton do not seem to share the same view and there is a danger that the collection and collating of these memorabilia may have to cease because of their lack of support.

Badminton Museum of Ireland accepts memorabilia either on loan or by donation and has permission to display these items on our website. This permission does not automatically extend to other parties. The Museum is glad to display items of interest to the Badminton public and explicit permission must be obtained from Badminton Museum of Ireland for use by other parties. In general permission will be given but is subject to the wishes of those who donated or loaned items.

We are glad to receive comments through the website and are interested in being made aware of interesting memorabilia being held by badminton people.

Dick O’Rafferty
Curator