The Monsells, of French extraction, were a plantation family from Dorsetshire, England, who had settled in Tervoe, county Limerick by the 1660s. Many of the early members of the family were prosperous merchants and landowners, most notably Samuel Monsell (d. 1735), a shipping merchant whose business extended from Ireland to England, France, Holland and Spain. Of his several sons, the eldest, William (1705-1772) became a lawyer. His second marriage in 1751 to Dymphna Pery (d. 1774), sister of Edmond Sexton Pery, MP and three-time Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, gave the Monsells not only a distinguished pedigree but considerable political influence. Their son, Colonel William Thomas Monsell (1754-1836), married Hannah Strettell of Dublin, whose father Amos Strettell was director of the Bank of Ireland. Their younger son, Thomas, became Archdeacon of Derry and was father to the noted hymnologist John Samuel Bewley Monsell and to the celebrated botanical artist Diana Conyngham Ellis née Monsell. Colonel Monsell’s elder son, William, was grandfather to and namesake of the distinguished politician William Monsell (1812-1894). His first wife, Anna Maria Wyndham Quin (1814-1855), whom he married in 1836, was daughter of the second Earl of Dunraven of Adare Manor, county Limerick, then one of the wealthiest men in Ireland. William Monsell was created 1st Baron Emly of Tervoe in 1874. The title became extinct on the death of his only surviving son, Thomas William Gaston Monsell (1858-1932), from his second marriage to Berthe de Montigny Boulainvilliers (d. 1890).
The Moynehall estate in county Cavan was granted by the Crown in 1629 jointly to Abigail Moigne née Dodd, widow of Thomas Moigne, Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral; her son Captain Roger Moigne; and her brother-in-law John Greenham. Three years later, Abigail and John released their right to and interest in the lands to Roger. When Roger was slain in the Siege of Drogheda in 1641, his three daughters became jointly entitled to the Moynehall estate. The eldest, Abigail, married Major Nicholas Moore and in 1698 settled her part of the Moynehall estate on her descendants. Samuel Moore the elder (d. 1848) was her great-great-great-grandson. He married Frances Nesbitt of the Lismore family in 1809. Their son Colonel Samuel Moore lived at Rockville and married his first cousin Louisa Nesbitt in 1849. They had an only child, Frances, who in 1883 married Captain Ernest Edward Cator Nevile of Yorkshire.
In 1794, the Moores leased Moynehall to Samuel Adams, whose descendants remained in possession until 1857, when the property was advertised for sale in the Encumbered Estates Court. In 1876, Moynehall belonged to John Fay. Today, it is home to the Backyard Arts and Cultural Centre.
Joan Denise Moriarty was a seminal character in the development of ballet in Ireland, both at amateur and professional levels. Little is known of her early life, including her date and place of birth. She was brought up in England and studied ballet in her youth with Marie Rambert. In 1933 her family returned to their native Mallow, where a year later Moriarty set up her first school of dance. In 1940, she established the Moriarty School of Dancing in Cork. She was also the founder of Cork Ballet Company (1947-1993) and Irish Theatre Ballet (1959-1964), which in 1963 merged with Patricia Ryan's National Ballet Company to form the short-lived National Ballet (1963-1964). The third ballet company associated with Moriarty was the Irish Ballet Company, later renamed Irish National Ballet, founded by the government in 1973 and financed by the Arts Council until 1989, when the funding was withdrawn and the company was forced to disband.
Moriarty was also a noted choreographer and drew inspiration from traditional Irish dance, a dance form in which she also excelled. Some of her best known ballets include Puck Fair (1948), The Children of Lír (1950), Papillons (1952), West Cork Ballad (1961), Devil to Pay (1962), Lugh of the Golden Arm (1977) and, perhaps most famously, The Playboy of the Western World (1978).
Joan Denise Moriarty continued her work with the Cork Ballet Company until the end of her life. She died in Dublin on 24 January 1992.
The Odellville estate passed from the Odell to the Morony family through the marriage of Helen Mary Odell to Edmund Morony in 1860. Their elder daughter, Eliza Helena, married in 1884 her cousin, Henry Vereker Lloyd Morony. On his death the property passed to the couple's only child, Helen Mary Matilda Morony, who married Edward Locke Lloyd of Heathfield, county Limerick, in 1917.
Mary Anne Mulcahy (née O’Keeffe) was born in 1927 in Mallow and first became interested in Irish dancing at the age of seven as a pupil of Joan Denise Moriarty, then the only Irish dancing teacher in the area. She later trained with Cormac O’Keeffe in Cork city. Having acquired teaching qualifications c. 1947, she established the Mulcahy School of Irish Dancing, which is now run by her daughter Breda. She also qualified as an adjudicator c. 1966. Mary Mulcahy remains well known in the Irish dancing circles and continues to travel around the world with pupils of the Mulcahy School of Irish Dancing.
Patricia Mulholland was the founder of the Irish Ballet School in Belfast and of the Irish Ballet Company, which made its debut in 1951 during the Festival of Britain in the Empire Theatre, Belfast. In 1953, at the request of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), Mulholland devised and produced the first Irish folk ballet, Cuchulain. A further group of ballets was sponsored by CEMA, including The Piper, The Dream of Angus Óg and Follow Me Down to Carlow. Other works in her extensive choreography, strongly influenced by Irish legends and folklore, include The Mother of Oisín, The Black Rogue, The Oul’ Lammas Fair in 1900, The Children of Lír, Phil the Fluter’s Ball and The Hound of Culann. Mulholland’s choreographies were not ballet in the classical sense but a form of folk ballet – Irish mythology interpreted by Irish dancers to Irish music and song. Patricia Mulholland is regarded as one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century Irish traditional dancing and the founder of Festival Dance, a specialised form of Irish dancing which focuses on the individuality of each dancer’s style, thus breaking away from the more rigid and formulaic ‘Feis’ style.