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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.]

Box containing six miscellaneous letters and papers of or about junior branches of the Parsons family, [all of them probably the children of the Hon. Laurence Parsons, youngest brother of the 3rd Earl – see J/29], including an epitome of the settlement made on the marriage of one of the Hon. Laurence Parsons’s daughters, 1878; together with numerous case papers and court orders concerning the lunacy of the Hon. Laurence Parson’s eldest son, Capt. Laurence Hardress Hector Parsons (d. 1924), 1897-1924.

Letters, tradesmen’s accounts, inventories of plate, specifications, tender and other papers of the 4th and 5th Earls, all concerning the contents of Birr Castle or improvements and alterations to Birr Castle and demesne and
to houses and cottages owned by the estate – the installation of motors and turbines, plumbing, lighting, heating, redecorating, ‘hacking off’ plaster-work, etc. [Not in chronological order. For other inventories of plate, etc, see H/8 and T/83.]

Largely empty, quarto volume into which the 4th Earl has stuck ‘puzzles’ and other jokes, one of the jokes being a characteristically illegible letter to him from Lord Ashbourne [Lord Chancellor of Ireland], c.1886-1903; and largely empty folio volume, dated 1823, but containing [a child’s?] ms copy of parts of the Book of Survey and Distribution for Co. Galway, [c.1880s?]