How to Lose a Tober

written by J.P Browne

A Tober which is Circus slang for a lot or site that the Circus can perform in are tough to come by. Ask any circus proprietor and they will tell you the difficulties year in and year out of trying to get the perfect site for a circus to perform. The site should be something highly visible in the town for publicity with access to amenities and convenient parking for customers to get to are some of the easier items I can list. Over the years it’s become harder and harder to find good Tobers with councils building on traditional sites or merely selling them off to private contractors. The loss of a good Tober can mean the circus not visiting that particular town or village for a period of time until some enterprising advance agent finds another suitable site or the council bequeaths one for a circus to perform in. An example of this would be Ennistymom, Co. Clare which had the Tober below.

Ennistymon Circus Field (1940) from the Village Lens, Co. Clare

This particular Tober became a golf course in the early 1960’s. The Connacht Telegraph mentions what happened to it.

The site of the new course incorporates the 'Circus Field' where for scores of years visiting circuses had pitched their tents. There is no other suitable field in Lahinch or Ennistymon and for the first time, since it started it's annual circuit of Ireland, famed Duffy's Circus was forced to bye-pass the towns to the disappointment of young and old folks alike. However, I guess some sacrifices must be made in the name of progress and the new golf course at Lahinch will be welcomed by the many golfers who visit this very popular Clare resort (Connacht Telegraph, August 20^th 1963).

While Tobers can be lost to the onset of progress some sites can be lost for other more unusual reasons. The strangest being the Tober in Cavan Town in the 1860’s. Supposedly it was one of the best locations in the country with Cavan Town always being a big place for travelling circuses to perform and get large crowds in. This particular Tober in Cavan was owned by the aristocrat Lord Farnham and rented out through his estate office.

Lord Henry Maxwell Farnham was a member of Parliament and one of the biggest landlords in all of Cavan. Disliked by a wide variety of his tenants for his evictions during the Irish Famine and while he set up soup kitchens they were only for people who renounced their Catholic faith and would convert to Protestantism. Even other members of the establishment considered him to be one of the worst types of absentee landlord with Robert Peel, the Home Secretary stating “such men as Mr. Henry Maxwell, drawing enormous sums from Irish livings, and leading a profligate life at Boulogne, are the real enemies of the establishment" (Institute of Historical Research, 2020). Regardless of people’s opinions of him Farnham was nevertheless a man of influence and wealth.

Lord Henry Maxwell Farnham photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 2 July 1861

On August 20^th, 1868 Farnham and his wife took a train from London to Holyhead in Wales to sail back to Ireland. The train was the Irish Mail train considered a “wonder of the railway age: it had been operating since 1860 and was the fastest train in use, capable of reaching 60 miles per hour. It was very popular with travellers to and from Holyhead, many of them people of status and wealth, and it had two special carriages where mail was sorted en route” (MacMahon, 2017). The train though never made it to Holyhead. At Abergele, Wales the Irish Mail collided with a run-away cargo train carrying 1,800 gallons of paraffin. The resulting explosion killed 32 passengers, leaving the bodies so badly charred that the majority were beyond recognition. Lord Farnham and his wife were both killed in the accident.

Apparently Lord Farnham's remains were only identifiable by the crest engraved on his watch and his wife by her dentures. The accident was the worst railway disaster in Britain up to that date. Once the bodies were identified a communication was sent to the estate in Cavan letting them know of the Abergele tragedy. The same day that the communication was received “Batty’s Circus” was playing in Cavan Town. A member of the estate visited the travelling English Circus and stated that out of respect for the now deceased Lord Farnham and his wife the circus show that evening should be cancelled. Batty’s Circus though refused to cancel the performance as they would be out a considerable sum of money. The show that evening went ahead and Batty’s Circus moved on to their new location the next day.

The Farnham estate though did not forget the slight done. Batty’s Circus was the last ever Circus to ever appear on land owned by the Farnham Family. In fact, all forms of entertainment were strictly prohibited on Farnham land going forward. From then on, all circuses had to move to new fields outside the town, on the ironically named Farnham Road (Anglo – Celt September 28^th 1940). The field itself was eventually sold and was turned into a Great Northern Railway bus garage for a gentleman named A.W. Gordon who ran “Magnet vehicles from Cavan to Dublin and other centres, and having sixty-eight of these coming or going daily from this town” (Anglo – Celt Newspaper September 28^th 1940).

The loss of modern-day Tobers is a significant source of frustration for circuses performing in Ireland, and understandably so. Public amenities should be a higher priority for councils when planning future infrastructure, particularly at a time when opportunities for people to gather and connect are becoming increasingly rare. Excuses like train crashes are few and far between.  

Reference list

Anglo - Celt Newspaper (1929). Letter. Anglo - Celt Newspaper, 19 Oct., p.6.

Anglo - Celt Newspaper (1940). Battys Circus. Anglo - Celt Newspaper, 28 Sep., p.7.

Connacht Telegraph (1963). Circus Field. Connacht Telegraph Newspaper, 20 Aug., p.3.

Frecker, P. (2026). Lord Farnham. [online] Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Available at: http://www.19thcenturyphotos.com/Lord-Farnham-124759.htm [Accessed 3 Jun. 2026].

Institute of Historical Research (2020). MAXWELL, Henry (1799-1868), of Farnham, co. Cavan. [online] Available at: https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/maxwell-henry-1799-1868 [Accessed 10 Jun. 2026].

MacMahon, B. (2017). The Abergele Mail Train disaster, 1868 . [online] Historyireland.com. Available at: https://historyireland.com/the-abergele-mail-train-disaster-1868/ [Accessed 3 Jun. 2026].