📍Kilkea House, Kilkea, Co. Kildare, Ireland
1874 – 1880“I was born in February 1874 at Kilkea House, a farmhouse in the rolling country of south County Kildare, five miles from Athy, the second child and eldest son in what would become a large family of brothers and sisters. My father, Henry, farmed the land, and our people had lived in the district for generations, close to the old Quaker community at Ballitore. When I was a small boy my father gave up farming to study medicine at Trinity College, and we moved to Dublin, and then, when I was ten, to Sydenham in south London, where he set up as a doctor. At Dulwich College I was bored by lessons and devoured adventure books instead, and at sixteen I went to sea. Ireland stayed in me — the open fields, the storytelling, a certain cheerful stubbornness. Years later, when Endurance was crushed in the Antarctic ice, I brought every one of my men home alive. The Shackleton Museum in Athy, near where I was born, now holds the cabin from my last ship.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today