A WALKING stick owned by Northern Ireland's first prime minister, James Craig, is expected to be sold for up to £5,000 when it goes up for auction in Belfast next week.

Using traditional blackthorn walking sticks as weapons, the sport combines the principles of fist-fighting and the motions of a stick. Glen Doyle is a Canadian master of Irish stick-fighting after ...

The estimate is £500-£700. The shillelagh (walking stick), Lot 574, is described as “shaped from oak or blackthorn, with carved relief decoration ‘From the green isle’ a harp, ‘Begorra ...

A BLACKTHORN walking stick once owned by James Craig has sold for £10,000 at an auction in Belfast. The sale at a Belfast auction house on Tuesday went for a fifth of the total paid for a stick ...

Despite originating in Ireland, Irish-stick fighting has almost completely died out in this country, but is growing in popularity elsewhere.

A BLACKTHORN walking stick once owned by Northern Ireland's first prime minister sold at auction for €11,800 / £10,000 - double the expected price. It had been presented to James Craig on his ...

More typically, blackthorn sticks (the hardest Irish wood) were smeared with butter and cured in chimneys over time. By the early 20th century, the shillelagh had become a tourist item.

There is a good crop of sloes in my neck of the woods this autumn. Sloes are, of course, the fruits of the Blackthorn that dense spiny shrub with a common name that refers to both its dark bark ...