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Middleton Westenra Biddulph was born on 17 August 1849 at Rathrobin, Mountbolus, King’s County (Offaly). He was one of six children, and the eldest surviving son of Francis Marsh Biddulph (1802–1868) and Lucy Bickerstaff (d. 1896). She was born in Preston, Lancashire and they married in 1845. The Bickerstaff connection was to be an important one for the surviving sons of Francis Marsh Biddulph, and led to a substantial inheritance in the 1890s for Middleton W Biddulph, and his brother Assheton, who lived at Moneyguyneen, Kinnitty.
The Biddulph ancestors were from Staffordshire, and later Wexford, and had arrived in King’s County from as early as 1694 or 1660. Lt Col. Biddulph held about 1,000 acres, of which perhaps 600 to 700 acres he farmed with the balance leased to his long-standing Protestant tenants. His landholding was principally in the townlands of Rathrobin and those adjoining of Clonseer, Cormeen, Kilmore and Mullaghcrohy, all near Mountbolus, in the civil parish of Killoughy and the barony of Ballyboy.

Middleton Biddulph went to Foxcroft House boarding school in Portarlington, aged 11, thereafter to the Royal School in Banagher, and joined the army when he was eighteen, enlisting with the Northumberland Fusiliers (Fifth Regiment). Initially an ensign or cornet, he rose in the ranks quickly and was a Lieutenant by 1871, Captain in 1881 and Major from 1885. Before retirement in 1896 he held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He spoke French, German and Hindustani and stations included: Hythe March (1872), St Helier’s, Chatham (1879) Portsmouth (1881), Agra (1880), Mullingar (1882), Newcastle (1886), Colchester (1887) and Aldershot (1891). It was while he was at Mullingar with the Ist Batt. Northumberland Fusiliers that he was appointed adjutant of the Ist Northumberland and ordered to proceed to Alnwick. It appears that he met his future wife, Vera Flower, following on from an introduction by her brother Stanley Smyth Flower (1871–1946), who was also an officer in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. They married in 1891. Vera Josephine Flower was a daughter of Sir William Flower, Director of the British Museum of Natural History, South Kensington, London. They did not have children.

When Biddulph retired from the army in the mid-1890s, he returned to Rathrobin and rebuilt the old house with the benefit of the Bickerstaff inheritance over the period 1898 to 1900. He employed Sir Thomas Drew as architect and William Beckett of Dublin as the builder. Once the new Rathrobin House was completed, Lt Col. Middleton Biddulph got on with his duties as a landlord and was a regular attender at the Petty Sessions, the Board of Guardians, and the County Infirmary, served as High Sheriff in 1901, and was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of the County in 1910. He was also on the board of the King’s County Joint Committee for Technical Instruction and the King’s County Farming Society. He and his wife left for England in June 1921 as the military campaign of the IRA in the locality intensified, and Rathrobin House was destroyed by Republican IRA forces in April 1923. While he seemed to have planned to return to Ireland after this, an attack on his land agent, Violet Magan, and his own declining health delayed plans to do so, and he died in Chelsea in May 1926.

Henry George Farmer was born in Birr Barracks on 17 January 1882 and was later baptised in the Garrison Church. He was the son of Sergeant Henry George Farmer and Mary Anne Farmer (nee Moore), Depot, Leinster Regiment.

Henry had three siblings, Martha Mary who was born in London and sadly a brother and sister who died in infancy, both of whom were interred in Birr Military Cemetery.

Henry was an accomplished musician at a young age. He joined the Royal Artillery, at Birr as a ‘boy soldier’ just a month and ten days after his 14 birthday on 27 February 1896. Upon joining he was recorded as being four foot and six and a half inches tall. He has brown eyes and light brown hair. Initially he played the violin and clarinet, but took private lessons on the horn.

Throughout his life Henry was also a prolific writer, his first published piece was a ‘Sketch of the Leinster Regiment’ which appeared in the King’s County Chronicle in 1901, in this he outlined the history and origins of this famous Irish regiment. Farmer’s next publication in 1904 was a far more substantial ‘Memoirs of the Royal Artillery Band: its origin, history and progress.'

Henry left the Royal Artillery Band in November 1911 due to medical reasons. Soon afterwards he took up a job as a musical director in the Broadway Theatre, New Cross, London. Later in 1914 he was offered musical directorship of the Coliseum Theatre in Glasgow but soon transferred to the Empire Theatre also in Glasgow. He remained there for 33 years.

During this time he become an external student at the University of Glasgow, later becoming a postgraduate there and completing his master’s degree and PhD. Farmer’s doctorate thesis, which he completed in 1926 was ‘A musical history of the Arabs’. Other music interests of Henry were Irish and Scottish music, which saw a publication in 1947 ‘A history of music in Scotland’.

Henry Farmer married Amy Maud Jackson in 1904. He died at the age of 83 in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.

Born in Glencullen House, Co Dublin on 30 May 1898, to Daniel O'Connell Fitz-Simon and his wife Alice Maud Bunbury MacFarlane, Christopher Fitz-Simon spent his early life at 'Moreen', in Sandyford, Co. Dublin. He was educated at Earlsfort House, Dublin and St. Edmund's, England. He completed his military training at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, England.

His military career began when he was commissioned in December 1917 for the Prince of Wales Leinster Regiment, Birr, Co Offaly, subsequently serving during World War 1, where he was wounded at Flanders in May 1918 and awarded the Military Cross. He returned to the Leinster depot at Birr until August 1920, and subsequently served on a peacekeeping mission to Silesia (Poland) in 1921. On the disbandment of the Leinsters in 1922, he joined the King's Own Royal Regiment in December of that year and saw subsequent service in India, Sudan, England, Egypt, and Palestine. He commanded the 2nd Battalion King's Own as temporary Lieutenant-Colonel, WW2 North Africa campaign against Italy in 1940/1941. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in 1942, and subsequently served in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland commanding the 1st battalion East Surrey Regiment. In 1942, he was hospitalised and invalided from the army in 1943.

In 1945, he was appointed land agent to the Tottenham estate at Mount Callan, Co. Clare and moved to a similar post in Annaghmakerrig, Co. Monaghan, in 1948. He retired to Glencullen House, Co. Dublin in 1953 and died in June 1984.

Col. Fitz-Simon married Gladys Killen, in October 1931; she pre-deceased him. Their sons are Dr Christopher O'Connell Fitz-Simon b.1934, now in Dublin, and Nicholas O'Connell Fitz-Simon, b.1936, now in Victoria, Australia.