If you are thinking of devoting your life to achieving a dream, perhaps the experience of Benjamin O’Neale Stratford will act as a cautionary tale. Born in 1808, he spent his life trying to build the world’s best hot-air balloon, only to see his dream go up in smoke. His balloon, on the other hand, never left the ground.
With a name like that, you might think he was born into a life of privilege. You would be right. His ancestors owned most of Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, although their fortunes were on the wane by the time Benjamin came along. This was mainly due to his feckless father, Mason Gerard Stratford, who had a penchant for bigamy; he collected and abandoned wives with reckless abandon. Benjamin was the sixth earl of Aldborough and he lived in Stratford Lodge, overlooking the town of Baltinglass.
To say he was eccentric is an understatement. Edward P O’Kelly makes this clear in his passages about Benjamin in the Journal of the Co Kildare Archaeological Society in 1905. It’s clear O’Kelly could have filled a book with tales about him. At one point, he noted in passing that the earl had only one eye, “the other having been removed by a heron that he had fired at”. He gave no further explanation, as though having your eye plucked out by a furious heron was an everyday occurrence.
According to the author, the earl’s sole aim in life was to construct a hot-air balloon and he devoted decades to the task. To accommodate his invention, he built a house at the western end of Stratford Lodge in chiselled Ballyknockan granite. Its door was 50 feet wide and 60 feet high so that the balloon could exit safely when inflated.
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The earl led a reclusive life as he worked on the balloon. Instead of hiring a cook, his meals came from Dublin every day on the Blessington and Baltinglass Royal Mail coach. They might not have been piping hot when they reached him, but a plate of cold cabbage and bacon is an insignificant matter when you are dreaming of flying across the sky in a basket.
He temporarily moved in with his balloon but vowed to leave the country
His plan was to fly to England and then on to France. Clearly an optimist, he bought a plot of land on the banks of the Seine to accommodate this dream. He had also hoped to offer the balloon to help the Crimean War effort. The author wrote: “He regretted exceedingly that he had not the balloon finished for the Russian War, that it might have been utilised by sharp-shooters to snipe the Russian generals.” They would have to be very sharp shooters indeed to risk their lives in a hot-air balloon above the Russian army.
By spring of 1858, when Ireland was still reeling from the effects of the Famine, the balloon was almost ready to take flight. Then, tragedy struck. A fire broke out in Stratford Lodge in the early hours of a Sunday morning in February. Neighbours rallied to help, presumably expecting that the earl would be keen to save the historic mansion. However, it quickly emerged that his only concern was to save the balloon house.
Stratford Lodge was left in ruins and while the balloon house escaped the worst of the fire, the balloon itself was irreparably damaged. He temporarily moved in with his balloon but vowed to leave the country – and his ballooning dreams – behind forever. The earl was true to his word, travelling to Alicante in Spain where he spent the remainder of his life.
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Not for him a life of lying on the beach and enjoying afternoon cocktails. No, he became even more reclusive over there, according to Paul Gorry in his book, Baltinglass Chronicles. He studiously avoided his countrymen and had his meals delivered to his room. Leaning into his eccentric character, he refused to leave out his used dishes and cutlery. When the crockery began to overflow, he would simply move to another room and start accumulating dishes again.
The earl hadn’t done much to add to the gaiety of life in Baltinglass so it’s not surprising that his death, in 1875, was a minor event for the people of the town.
As for the balloon house, it was dismantled and the stone was used in the construction of the tower of St Joseph’s church in Baltinglass. While the balloon never saw the sky, the land where it once stood sees plenty of airborne activity today. It is home to Baltinglass Golf Club, where members send their golf balls soaring into the air on a daily basis.
