Henry Dunlop

Henry Wallace Doveton Dunlop (1844–1930) is a former leader of Irish Rugby, founder of Lansdowne Football Club, and visionary behind the construction of the former Lansdowne Road stadium.

An engineering graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, he founded the great Dublin club Lansdowne and is mostly the reason of the oldest international stadium of world rugby, Lansdowne Road.

Dunlop founded the Irish Champion Athletic Club in 1871. After an initial meeting at Trinity College, the Provost of the College banned any further meeting on campus. Dunlop had to find a new home for his sporting endeavours. Writing in 1921, Dunlop stated: "I was therefore forced to look for another plot, and after careful consideration chose the present Lansdowne Road one. In conjunction with the late Edward Dillon (my trainer), I took a 69 year lease from the Pembroke Estate, paying a ground rent of £60 per annum, of part only of the premises stretching from the railway to about 60 yards from the Dodder. I laid down a cinder running path of a quarter-mile, laid down the present Lansdowne Tennis Club ground with my own theodolite, started a Lansdowne archery club, a Lansdowne cricket club, and last, but not least, the Lansdowne Rugby Football Club - colours red, black and yellow. On the tennis club grounds the first tennis championship was held long before Fitzwilliam meetings."

Dunlop founded Lansdowne Football Club in 1872 and that club has played rugby union ever since at the grounds, being one of the most prominent and successful rugby clubs in Leinster and Ireland. Wanderers Football Club, founded in 1869, joined Lansdowne at the grounds later. The two clubs were tenants since that time, and also use the new Aviva Stadium.

Some 300 cartloads of soil from a trench beneath the railway were used to raise the ground, allowing Dunlop to utilise his engineering expertise to create a pitch envied around Ireland.

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