Brown bear goes on display at Turlough Park
A brown bear is now on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Turlolugh as part of an ongoing exhibition, The Murmur of Bees, which explores bees and their important role in Ireland’s biodiversity. Pictured with the exhibit is Tiernan Gaffney, the museum's curator of the Irish Folklife Division. Picture: Karen Cox
A bear has returned to the historic estate of Turlough Park in Castlebar more than 200 years after the infamous landlord, ‘Fighting Fitzgerald’, kept one there as a pet.
The brown bear has gone on temporary display in the National Museum of Ireland as part of an ongoing exhibition, , which explores bees and their important role in Ireland’s biodiversity.
Bears have long been associated with bees and honey and one of the ancient Irish names for a bear is (honey-lover).
The bear, which is from the Museum’s Natural History Collection in Dublin, was officially unveiled on Monday, December 1. The specimen looks set to impress visitors. The female bear from Alaska has pale brown fur and is mounted standing on her hind legs, with long claws outstretched towards the visitor.
Brown bears once roamed throughout Ireland. While they became extinct here thousands of years ago, some were occasionally brought to Ireland as exotic pets or circus performers and for blood sports.
In the late 18th century, George Robert Fitzgerald, also known as ‘Fighting Fitzgerald’, kept a pet bear at Turlough Park – the former ancestral home of the Fitzgerald family and now the site of the National Museum of Ireland. A colourful and controversial figure, Fitzgerald reportedly chained his own father to the pet bear at one time. Fitzgerald was later convicted of conspiracy to murder his father’s attorney and was hanged in Castlebar in 1786.
Emma Murphy is a curator with the Natural History Division of the National Museum of Ireland. She outlined that bears are the most abundant and widespread carnivore found in the Irish fossil record.
“Fossils from Irish caves show that bears were present in Ireland for tens of thousands of years, from 40,000 years to 3,100 before present (BP),” said Ms Murphy.
“They lived here at most times when the country was free of ice, repopulating the area many times. The most recent date of 3,100 BP means that there was a time when early human settlers and bears co-existed on this island.”
The bear is on display on Level A of the exhibition galleries at the National Museum of Ireland in Turlough Park. It follows the bee-related temporary displays of Harry Clarke’s drawing of St Gobnait and Alice Maher’s Bee Dress, as part of exhibition. A programme of associated events will follow in early 2026.
