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Original box of Birr Estate Office in-letters to the then Rosse agent, A.E. Telford, many of them from the 6th Earl and Anne Countess of Rosse. Lord and Lady Rosse’s letters do not confine themselves to estate business, but include arrangements for house parties at Birr Castle. [For the other side of the correspondence with Lord and Lady Rosse, see T/34].

‘E’, ‘F’ and ‘G’ - principally Evans, Barraclough & Co., Bayswater, London (solicitors to the Hon. Richard Clere Parsons), French & French, solicitors, Dublin (who acted for Mrs Manning Robertson of Drumbane House, Birr, another
of Garvey’s employers), the General Accident Assurance Corporation and the Guardian Assurance Company, both of Dublin (who write about Birr Castle and the Rosse estate), etc, etc.

‘N’ and ‘0’.

Correspondence and other papers of the 4th and 5th Earls of Rosse on subjects other than astronomy, including estate and other King’s County affairs, the 4th Earl’s contributions to public life as a representative peer, Chancellor of T.C.D., etc, etc.

Original bundle of applications/ recommendations for the post of head gardener at Birr (Andrew Hume being the successful applicant).

Letters and papers of the 4th Earl about Parsonstown/Birr: the Castle – his youthful recollections of it, extensions to it 1867-72 [see also M/25], a magazine portrait of his way of life there, 1898, and magazine obituaries of him, 1908; an incident which took place on the road between Banagher and Parsonstown and in which the 4th Earl and his party were stopped and temporarily put in gaol by a drunken R.I.C. man, 1868; the Parsonstown Barracks, 1869, 1899 and N.D.; the Parsonstown Town Commission and Commissioners, 1870 and 1885; admissions to the demesne of privileged locals, 1876-1910; and one of the bridges in the Birr Castle demesne, and the Rivers Brosna and Camcor, 1880 and 1896. The correspondents include Gladstone, W.E. Forster and Lords Strathnairn and Roberts. The sub-section also includes a small account book recording local subscriptions to the Parsonstown Defence Association, the Property Defence Association, the legal fund of the Irish Land Committee, and the Field and Rossmore Testimonials, c.1882.

Letters and papers, mostly of the 4th and 5th Earls and Dr Otto Boeddicker, concerning Parsons family history and genealogy, including information about the Oxmantown/Phoenix Park property, sold by the elder branch of the Parsons family to the crown in 1672. Of particular interest is a paper entitled ‘How the Parsons, Earls of Rosse, got the Titles of Baron and Viscount of Oxmantown’.

Original bundle of letters and papers of the 4th Earl about sewage disposal at Birr, by turbine and sundry other methods; the correspondents include Bindon B. Stoney [see K/24. Not in chronological order.]

Original bundle of letters and papers concerning the 4th Earl’s patents for a machine which he had invented for removing leaves and other matter from turbines, 1901-4; together with notes on his experiments with electro-plating, 1908. [Not in chronological order.]

Papers about Birr Church of Ireland church and parish, including historical compilations of the rev. Dr Samuel Hemphill, Rector of Birr, covering the period 1612-1903. The compilations consist of a small quarto notebook containing MS. Copies of 1642 depositions concerning the neighbourhood of Birr; another containing a history of Birr Church of Ireland church (taken from vestry books, parish registers, etc), 1760-1903); and two succession lists of Birr incumbents, 1612-1912. The sub-section also includes a series of printed annual reports on the parish and on the diocese of Killaloe and Kilfenora, 1900-10.