Hester was born in 1762, the eldest surviving child of Thomas and Frances Berry of Eglish. In 1787 she married William Smith, a lawyer and member of the Irish Parliament. She was fifteen years older than Robert Fleetwood Berry, her brother. She had two daughters and two sons, lived in Hume Street, of St. Stephens Green in Dublin and died in 1832.
Frances Berry was born in 1743, and was the only child of Knight Berry of Birr and Eglish and his wife Sophia, daughter of Captain James Sterling of Whigsborough. In 1759 she married Thomas Berry. They lived at Eglish Castle and had sixteen children. Frances Berry died in 1807 and is buried at Eglish.
William Larkin was a land surveyor, notable for creating county maps in the early nineteenth century. Not much is known about him, other than that he attended the Dublin Society’s drawing school in 1788. He was most prolific in the early 1800s when he created a series of remarkable maps, beginning with 1805 map of the post roads of Ireland (British Library Maps 10835 (2)). He followed with road surveys for the Post Office such as Dublin – Enniskillen (1806), Dublin – Ratoath and Curragha (1807), and several other routes which saw him work across a large part of southern and western Ireland (1807-1808). 1807 also saw him complete a set of estate maps for the earl of Leitrim’s Manorhamilton estate.
Aorund this time, Larkin began to produce county maps, beginning with County Westmeath. Between 1817- 1819 he had published Meath, Waterford, Galway, Leitrim and Sligo. He had also had drafted manuscript maps for Cavan, Louth, Monagahn and King’s County.
The map for King’s County was completed in 1807 for the Grand Jury for their rooms at Philipstown (now Daingean). The map was never engraved or published due to a lack of subscribers. The manuscript map is now presumed lost.
In 1809, however, the newly constituted Bogs Commissioners engaged Larkin to produce a map of King’s County exhibiting all the bogs of the county. This was based on the manuscript county map and is now held by the National Archives of Ireland.
Larkin died some time before 1824.
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.
Fitz-Simon, Christopher Richard Manners Daniel O'Connell, Lt Col
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.
Edenderry’s Poor Law Union was formed on the 7th of May in 1839. The Union was controlled by twenty-two elected Board of Guardians, as well as seven ex-officio Guardians, who all met weekly. It covered an area of 172,410 acres, representing electoral divisions from three different counties: from Offaly (King’s) – Ballaghassan, Ballyburly, Ballymacwilliam, Bracknagh, Clonbullogue, Clonmore, Clonsast, Croghan, Edenderry, Esker, Knockdrin and Monasteroris. From County Kildare – Ballynadrummy, Cadamstown, Carbury, Carrick, Cloncurry, Drehid, Dunfierth, Killinthomas, Kilpatrick, Kilrainy, Lullymore, Rathangan, Thomastown and Windmill Cross. From County Meath – Ardnamullen, Ballyboggan, Castlejordan, and the Hill of Down.
Edenderry workhouse, designed to accommodate 600 people, was completed in 1841 and took in its first residents in 1842. While the workhouse closed in 1921, the administrative structures of Edenderry Union were abolished in 1925, with the Board of Guardians powers being formally transferred to the county council’s Board of Health. The workhouse building itself had various uses in the following decades before being levelled in 1976 to make way for a home for the aged ‘Ofalia House’.
Benjamin Bloomfield was born on 13 April 1768, son of John Bloomfield, Lieutenant of the grenadiers and Miss Waller. In 1797 he married Harriet Douglas of Suffolk and they moved to Ireland soon after. They had one son, John Arthur Douglas Bloomfield, born in 1802, a daughter, Charlotte who died in 1828, and a daughter Georgiana, who later married Henry Trench of Cangort Park. His sister, Anne Bloomfield, married Thomas Ryder Pepper of Loughton House. When Pepper died in 1828, he left Loughton House to Lord Bloomfield.
He commanded a battery of artillery at Vinegar Hill during the 1798 Rebellion. During his long military career he held the following posts: G.C.B. and G.C.H., a Lieutenant-General in the army, Colonel- Commandant of the Royal Horse Artillery, Governor of Fort Charles, Jamaica, and a Privy Councillor. He held the distinguished and confidential offices of Clerk, Marshal, Private Secretary and Privy Purse to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, afterwards King George IV. He was nine years Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Sweden, and subsequently Commandant at Woolwich.
Lord Bloomfield died in Portman Square, Woolwich on 15 August 1846 and his remains were taken to Loughton House.
Thomas Ryder Pepper married Anne Bloomfield, daughter of John Bloomfield and Anne Charlotte Waller. He lived at Loughton House which built in 1777 on lands owned by the Pepper family. The Pepper family lived at Loughton House until Thomas Pepper died as a result of a hunting accident. Thomas Pepper requested in his will that his brother-in-law, the 1st Lord Bloomfield, Benjamin Bloomfield, acquire Loughton House.
Bloomfield, John Arthur Douglas
The 2nd Lord Bloomfield became a diplomat like his father and served as ambassador in Vienna from 1860-1871, after which he retired. He became a peer in the United Kingdom and was given the title Baron Bloomfield of Ciamhalta in County Tipperary, a neighbouring property to Loughton demesne. Although he died at Ciamhalta in 1879, he was buried in Borrisnafarney Church, Loughton where his father was buried. In 1845, he married the Hon. Georgiana Liddel, youngest daughter of the 1st Lord Ravensworth and they had no children. His sister, Georgiana Mary Emily married Henry Trench of Cangort Park in 1836 and he sold the Loughton estate to him in 1870.
James Lyttleton is an archaeologist living in Bristol. He has taught medieval and post-medieval archaeology in University College Cork, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Maynooth University. In 2006 he completed a PhD in UCC looking at the architecture and settlement of the seventeenth-century Jacobean plantations in Co. Offaly. In 2008 he was awarded a post-doctoral research fellowship in Memorial University of Newfoundland to carry out a comparative archaeological study of settlements established by the Lords Baltimore in seventeenth-century Ireland, Newfoundland and Maryland. Over the years, James has co-edited and contributed to a number of books looking at aspects of medieval and early modern Ireland. He has also written a number of books: Blarney Castle, an Irish tower house (Dublin, 2011); The Jacobean Plantations in seventeenth-century Offaly: an archaeology of a changing world (Dublin, 2013); and An archaeology of Northern Ireland, 1600–1650 (Belfast, 2017). He currently works as a Senior Heritage Consultant with AECOM UK and Ireland, an environmental and engineering consultancy.