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This collection contains material created and generated by the Armstrong and Kemmis families during their ownership of Moyaliffe House, county Tipperary, and includes both administrative records and personal documents. Seventeenth-century material is scarce and limited in the main to leases of small pockets of land in counties Tipperary and Limerick. A more unusual item from this period is the satirical manuscript poem On the Bill of Conformity (P6/2137), attributed to Henry Hall, one of only sixteen known copies in the world. Eighteenth-century administrative records are mainly of financial and legal nature and arise from the badly managed affairs of William Armstrong (1704-1768), which affected his brother, the Reverend John Armstrong, who succeeded to the estate. Of personal items, the collection of early eighteenth-century sermons (P6/375-P6/427) attributed to the Reverend Edward Armstrong, the Reverend John Armstrong and others is of particular interest.

The nineteenth-century administrative material relates predominantly to the management of the Moyaliffe estate, and the succession to and management and eventual disposal of the family’s estates in Mayo and Sligo. There are also some clerical records of interest, most notably material relating to tithe wars of the 1830s (P6/758-P6/766 and P6/789-P6/813), and the state of dilapidation of the Mansion House of the See of Tuam discovered after the death, in 1819, of the Most Reverend Honourable William Beresford, first Baron Decies, Archbishop of Tuam, whose daughter Catherine was married to the Reverend Willam Carew Armstrong (1791-1847) (P6/850-P6/860).

By far the most voluminous, and perhaps the most interesting, part of the collection is that relating to the twentieth century. The administrative records in this section are in the main concerned with the management not only of Moyaliffe House but also of Ballinacor, county Wicklow, home of Captain William Daryl Olphert Kemmis. There is also a large quantity of material relating to Moyaliffe Stud (P6/1547-P6/1595), and to the problem of succession to the Moyaliffe and Ballinacor estates following Captain Kemmis’s death without issue in 1965 (P6/1812-P6/1834). On the personal side, the extensive correspondence of Rosalie Armstrong and her daughter Jess provide a unique insight into the genteel Anglo-Irish lifestyle and the irrevocable changes wrought upon it by the onset of the First World War. Of unique significance are the letters of Captain Kemmis to his father (P6/1475-P6/1479), and the letters and diaries of Captain William Maurice (‘Pat’) Armstrong written during the First World War (P6/1209-P6/1212 and P6/1414-P6/1418), providing first-hand accounts of events as they unfolded in the various theatres of war.

The twentieth-century material was roughly arranged by Jess Kemmis, who also appears to have destroyed some of it for personal reasons. Items thus lost included letters written by her niece, Bettyne Spencer (née Everard), to justify her actions during the Moyaliffe House dispute (for which see P6/1821-P6/1831). The letters were destroyed by Mrs Kemmis because she felt her niece’s views to be wrong. Also missing are Jess Kemmis’s diaries for the years 1955-1982 which she is known to have kept assiduously with the view to their permanent preservation within the family papers.

Jess Kemmis provided many explanatory notes and dates relating to the Armstrong Papers and the people and events to which they relate. These notes, which can be found scattered throughout the collection, should be treated with due caution as most, while well-intentioned and often helpful, can be misleading or inaccurate, written as they were in advanced old age.

This collection contains material created and received by the Carrol, Angus and Scott families, particularly during their ownership and residence of Tulla and Lissenhall but also beyond. It includes legal, administrative and personal documents. There is a small amount of late eighteenth century material, the more interesting of which is a map from 1798 of the Kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, though the bulk of the documents are from the nineteenth century. Legal documents include wills and issues of probate and executorship, affidavits, judgments, opinions and correspondence covering financial and trustee arrangements. They also include a large quantity of correspondence related to land sales and transfers, such as agreements, ejectment decrees and indentures, much of which arise from William Hutchison’s efforts to bring estate matters into order. Of particular interest is a return of debts due by the late Lieutenant General Sir William Parker Carrol and paid by his executors which lists many Limerick and Tipperary businesses from the period. Later documents, particularly relating to a legal struggle between the Carrol’s and Lloyds Insurance regarding claims for losses due to the theft of livestock and equipment during the 1920s, are also illuminating.
The Carrol family’s direct involvement with the Tulla and Lissenhall Estates has resulted in the collection containing some rental accounts which provide the names of tenants, acreage and their rentals and also estate accounts which includes the names of local individuals and businesses having commercial interaction with the Carrol estate. Other estate material involves correspondence regarding day to day estate management and operations but worthy of note is a print of the Encumbered Estates auction schedule which includes a description of Lot 1, Lissenhall, its tenants and rents at the time of William Hutchison Carrol’s purchase, and also Alice Carrol’s interactions with the Land Commission leading up to her vacating Lissenhall.
Personal material includes a great deal of personal correspondence and letters from family members much of which is concerned with family genealogy and includes printed and transcribed material from third party sources. Correspondence from institutions with regard to personal finances, stocks and taxation issues is also present. There is a significant quantity of photographs, both in albums and loose covering most of the principal individuals dating from the 1860s to the 1990s. Also present is a large scrapbook. The result of a familial connection to the Scott’s and compiled over nearly fifty years from 1895 to 1944, it contains copious material on Clement Scott and also the Du Maurier family, including photographs of Gerald Du Maurier and the young Daphne with her siblings.

This collection comprises printed and manuscript materials primarily relating to county Tipperary collected by Timothy Looney and research material assembled and generated by him for local history lectures and walking tours. The most notable element of the collection is the substantial quantity of estate papers relating to Shanbally Castle, Clogheen, county Tipperary, built for Cornelius O’Callaghan, 1st Viscount Lismore in c. 1810. The building was demolished in stages by the Land Commission between 1957 and 1960, during which time the bulk of the family papers were destroyed. The papers salvaged by Timothy Looney (for which see sub-series P43/1/1) include a near complete set of rentals from the early eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century account books, extensive estate correspondence from the early nineteenth to the mid twentieth century, and a range of townland map surveys from 1715 to 1898 primarily for counties Cork and Tipperary. Clogheen Fever Hospital records (sub-series P43/1/1/2/3) and the 1821 census records of Clogheen (P43/1/6/2) are also worth noting, as is the unusually large set of correspondence between Viscount Lismore’s tenants in counties Cork and Tipperary and his agent William Rochfort from the turn of the twentieth century (sub-series P43/1/1/5/1/3/1-2). The Looney collection further contains a quantity of estate papers from Castle Hyde and Doneraile Court in county Cork, and Castle Otway in county Tipperary.