Kilkenny's Patrick Mullins aboard Nick Rockett after winning the Randox Grand National (Mike Egerton/PA)
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07 Sept 2025
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07 Sept 2025
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Arthur Conan Doyle's mother, Mary Foley (1832-1920)
A fascinating book on the lives of extraordinary Kilkenny people has proven that the author of the Sherlock Holmes books is of Kilkenny extraction.
Arthur Conan Doyle's grandmother was from Kilkenny city.
Her name was Mrs Mary Foley (1837-1920). And Conan Doyle's mother, also named Mary lived on James's Street, Kilkenny as a very young child before her mother, a widow, was forced to flee to Scotland in 1847 after she had been disinherited by her Protestant family who had been 'repulsed' after she had married a Catholic who died suddenly of a heart attack leaving Mary to fend for herself and her young family.
She set up a school for governesses in Edinburgh and also took lodgers. One of those was Charles Doyle, who later married Mary's eldest daughter, also named Mary; the mother of Arthur Conan Doyle.
The story forms a chapter in a book by Kilkenny resident, Donal Cadogan, called 99 Lives - Kilkenny Connections.
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