BADMINTON MUSEUM OF IRELAND - April 2010 Editorial

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.

Welcome to BADMINTON MUSEUM OF IRELAND. Irish badminton has operated in an organised way since 1899 when the Badminton Union of Ireland was founded. It has, accordingly, a long tradition of players, personalities, events, and occasions. Over the years various people in every part of Ireland have collected memorabilia of all sorts but especially photographs and newspaper cuttings. Now a small group of people have come together to establish a Museum and ensure that the game’s heritage is preserved in a formal way. BADMINTON MUSEUM OF IRELAND has been inaugurated with four Trustees (Mary Dinan, Frank Egan, Vivien Hood, and Dick O’Rafferty). Dick will also act as Curator. BADMINTON MUSEUM OF IRELAND has been registered with the Companies Registration Office. It is intended to update this web site monthly and keep interested people informed of progress made.

Basically, a Museum consists of a secure area where archive material can be stored and irreplaceable memorabilia displayed. By agreement, however, photographs can be displayed in any badminton premises and rotated at regular intervals. This will make players generally more aware of the heritage of the game and raise its image.

Monthly, we intend to display a picture of interest from the many that we have already collected, and a historical note. This month, appropriately, we show in the Gallery a picture of the premises where it all started 110 years ago and in the Historical Section a note from one of badminton’s earliest books.

Dick O’Rafferty, Curator, Badminton Museum of Ireland