Brian Bunting was born in Belfast in 1946. He attended St Mary’s Christian Brothers Primary School and later the Grammar School in Barrack Street, Belfast. At the age of 7, his parents sent him to the Patricia Mulholland School of Irish Dancing. In 1954, he was part of the junior support cast in Cúchulainn, the first major Irish Ballet produced by Patricia Mulholland, with Norman Maternaghan (Maen) in the lead role. Over the subsequent years Brian also danced in the later Irish Ballets produced by Patricia Mulholland, including The Dream of Angus Óg, The Oul’ Lammas Fair, The Mother of Oisín, The Children of Lir, Phil the Fluter’s Ball, Celtic Anthology, and the Variety Market. In 1958, Brian won the inaugural Junior Northern Ireland Championships (Boys). He was part of the team of Patricia Mulholland dancers that performed at festivals in the Royal Albert Hall, London and Cork (1962), Royan in France (1964), and the Isle of Man and Leeds (1967). Brian joined the Northern Ireland Civil Service in 1963. Owing to work and family commitments, he left the dancing school and stopped Irish dancing in 1968. He retired from the NICS in 2005.
Rosemary Butcher was a British choreographer and dancer known for her minimalist style.
The title Earl of Ormonde is one of the oldest titles in the peerages in the British Islands. It was first granted in 1328 to John Butler (d. 1338). The 19th Earl of Ormonde, James Wandesford Butler (1777-1838), held the office of Lord Lieutenant of county Kilkenny between 1831 and 1838 and the office of Militia Aide-de-Campt to King William IV from 1832 to 1837. In 1825, he was created 1st Marquess of Ormonde. The last holder of the titles was James Hubert Theobald Charles Butler, 7th Marquess of Ormonde (1899-1997), upon whose death the marquessate became extinct and the earldom became dormant. The family's main seats were Cahir Castle in county Tipperary and Kilkenny Castle in county Kilkenny.
Róisín Cahalan was born and raised in Limerick. She trained at the Nolan School of Irish Dance for ten years and later at Scoil Rince Dal gCais under the direction of Anthony Costello. She is a five-time Munster Champion and has placed in the top three at the All-Irelands and British Nationals. Her highest placing at the World Championships was second.
After retiring from competition, Róisín attended the University of Limerick, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in business and a postgraduate degree in computer studies. Upon completion of her academic studies, she became a computer programmer in Dublin. Róisín put her career on hold when she joined the Riverdance Liffey Company in August 1996. She moved to the Lagan Company in January 1998 and returned to the Liffey Company in August 1998.
Grace O’Malley was born in 1934 as the elder of two children of Charles Vincent O’Malley and Dr Sarah (Judy) née Walsh. Her father was a dentist and ran a successful dental practice in the heart of Limerick city at No. 4 Pery Square, while her mother worked as a doctor and ophthalmologist. Grace was educated at Mount Anville in Dublin and later entered University College Dublin, where her studies for a degree in French and Italian were interrupted by tuberculosis in 1956. Following her recovery, Grace worked in public relations in Shannon. In 1958 she met and married her husband, George Cantillon, and had four children with him. Grace’s lifelong interest in family history culminated in an MA in Art History at University of Limerick in 2004 and the publication of The Round House O’Malleys: The Power of One Woman! in 2014.
The O’Carrolls of Lissenhall were an old Irish Catholic family and prosperous landowners in county Tipperary. During the era of penal laws they conformed to the established religion to ensure the retention of their estates and, in a further process of Anglicisation, removed the ‘O’ and the last ‘l’ from their surname.
Perhaps the most famous of the eighteenth-century Carrols was Lieutenant-General William Parker Carrol (1776-1842), whose distinguished military career earned him a knighthood in 1816. Originally trained as a lawyer, he joined the army as a volunteer at the commencement of war with France in 1794. By 1800, he had risen to the rank of Captain and was posted to a fencible regiment in Gibraltar, where he learnt to speak fluent Spanish. Six years later, Carrol distinguished himself as part of the ill-fated British expedition against Buenos Aires. He frequently volunteered in dangerous and difficult situations and his knowledge of Spanish proved to be an essential service to the army. During the Peninsular War, he took part in 28 different engagements and was decorated by both the British and Spanish no less than twelve times. When his father died in 1816, Carrol retired from the army and took over the management of the family seat Tulla, county Tipperary. A year later, he married Emma-Sophia Sherwill (1799-1819) and by her had two children, William Hutchinson Carrol (1817-1895) and John Egerton Carrol (1819-1852). He resumed his army career in 1821 and was posted to Malta and later to the Ionian Islands, but, having contracted malaria, was forced to return home in 1830. He died at Tulla on 2 June 1842.
Carrol’s elder son, William Hutchinson Carrol (1817-1895), followed his father into the army, reaching the rank of Captain in the Iniskilling Dragoons. Upon his father’s death in 1842, he assumed responsibility of the family estate in Tulla, which his father’s long absences had left in some disarray, with large debts. In 1853, Captain Carrol purchased Lissenhall near Nenagh, county Tipperary, its demesne and several other adjoining tracts of land through the Incumbered Estates Commission. At the time of sale, Thomas Dagg was a tenant in Lissenhall and an arrangement was made for him to rent the house and demesne. This arrangement suited Captain Carrol as he at the time had not sufficient funds to undertake a relocation to Lissenhall. This turned out to be a mixed blessing however, for when in 1869 Carrol was in a position to move from Tulla to the larger house in Lissenhall, Thomas Dagg refused to move. The legal position was not resolved until 1873.
In December 1862 Captain Carrol married Elizabeth (Bessie) Leslie Griffin (d. 1887) and the couple had six children of whom one only survived six weeks. Carrol died in 1895, and the family estates passed to his only surviving son, Egerton Griffin Carrol, who died just 15 months later. The responsibility for the management of the estate was left to his three sisters, Alice Isabel (1865-1940), Maud Rose (1865-1942) and Florence Kate (1871-1935), but it was Alice who bore the bulk of it. Her succession to the management of the Lissenhall estate came about at a time when the Land Acts came into force. As the estate’s holdings eroded through the sale of lands to its former tenants, the difficulty of keeping the enterprise afloat grew increasingly complex. Alice had on-running interactions with her solicitors concerning The National Income Tax Recovery Agency, The Irish Land Commission and Lloyds Insurance. By the 1920s she also had to contend with thefts of her stock and equipment and threats to her safety by the IRA. By this time, she had to bow to the inevitable and oversaw the disposal of Lissenhall house and demesne to the Land Commission and eventually left the property in 1922. Alice continued to live in Nenagh, county Tipperary until 1927 before moving to England. She died unmarried on 23 January 1940.
Maude Rose Carrol, the second daughter of William Hutchinson, married in June 1902 George Maxwell Angas, a gentleman farmer and a consummate horseman from Yorkshire. The couple lived at the Manor Farm, Wissendine, Rutland until 1910, when they moved into Lissenhall in order that George could better manage a farm he owned nearby. During the following years and up to the time Lissenhall was vacated he was of considerable help to Alice in the management of the Lissenhall estate. However, the Angas family left Lissenhall in 1922 in the face of continuing unrest in the area. The couple’s daughter Rosaleen married Paul Johan Tausch (1899-1967), a skiing instructor from Austria and the couple made their home in The White House, Coggeshall, Essex.
Florence Kate Carrol, the youngest of William Hutchinson’s daughters, eneoyed greater freedom than her elders sisters. Outstanding in amateur theatricals and an exceptional equestrian, she found a perfect partner in Philip Clement Scott (1871-1932), son of Clement Scott, the influential English theatre critic, playwright and travel writer. Philip’s mother Isabel du Maurier was aunt to the actor Gerald du Maurier, whose daughter Daphne du Maurier reaped international fame as a writer. Florence and Philip’s only child, Anthony Gerald O’Carroll Scott (1899-1980) spent his boyhood at Lissenhall and was particularly close to his Maude and Alice during his parents’ extended absences. Like so many of his ancestors, he enjoyed a long and varied military career. His wife, Helena Gertrude James (1899-1984), whom he married in August 1926, was to follow him on each and every posting during his career. Their only child, June Mary O’Carrol Scott was born in 1928. She and her husband, James Robertson (1920-2000), an officer in the Guards Armoured Division, both trained as teachers following James’s retirement from the army in 1964. June taught at primary level in a number of locations over the next twenty years. She is the author of A Long Way from Tipperary (1994), which traced the history of her father’s Irish ancestors, and of Only Remember the Laughter (2005), an account of her own life story. In 2002, having become a widow and with no children of her own, she donated the Carroll family papers and memorabilia to Limerick Civic Trust.
For a full biography of Roger Casement, please refer to the Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/casement-sir-roger-david-a1532.