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Five envelopes containing miscellaneous estate accounts and financial and estate correspondence of the Birr Estate Office, much of it about arterial drainage (including printed matter back to 1869), one account of 1874 mentioning the cost of labour on the mounting for the three-foot telescope, and other long runs of accounts relating to the Dovegrove, Killeen and Newtown farms and stock, and to the manor saw mill, 1886-1912. [Not in chronological order.]

Letters and papers of the 4th Earl about Parsonstown/Birr: the Castle – his youthful recollections of it, extensions to it 1867-72 [see also M/25], a magazine portrait of his way of life there, 1898, and magazine obituaries of him, 1908; an incident which took place on the road between Banagher and Parsonstown and in which the 4th Earl and his party were stopped and temporarily put in gaol by a drunken R.I.C. man, 1868; the Parsonstown Barracks, 1869, 1899 and N.D.; the Parsonstown Town Commission and Commissioners, 1870 and 1885; admissions to the demesne of privileged locals, 1876-1910; and one of the bridges in the Birr Castle demesne, and the Rivers Brosna and Camcor, 1880 and 1896. The correspondents include Gladstone, W.E. Forster and Lords Strathnairn and Roberts. The sub-section also includes a small account book recording local subscriptions to the Parsonstown Defence Association, the Property Defence Association, the legal fund of the Irish Land Committee, and the Field and Rossmore Testimonials, c.1882.

Includes letters about Disestablishment, Poor Law reform, Orangeism, Conservative registration, Home Rule and the Irish Land question. Also includes letter from M. McCormack, CC, Kinnitty to Lord Rosse concerning agrarian dispute in Kinnitty parish between Francis Foley and Delaney at Newtown (3 March 1911).

Formal invitations to the 4th and 5th Earls – to civic functions in Belfast, and to Edward VII’s and George V’s coronations.

Letters and papers of Lord Oxmantown, subsequently 5th Earl of Rosse, as a trustee of the marriage settlement of the 5th Earl of Malmesbury. [Not in chronological order.]

Box of conacre, grazing, weekly, monthly, yearly or caretaker proposals/agreements.

Patents appointing the 5th Earl Lieutenant and Custos rotulorum of King’s County in succession to his late father,
including two letters from [the Lord Lieutenant], Lord Aberdeen, on the subject (one of them making unsubtle reference to the necessity for the 5th Earl’s committing himself to political support of the government of the day), letters to the 5th Earl giving confidential opinions as to the suitability of various people for appointment as J.P.s, and a tradesman’s account for supplying a Lieutenant’s flag for Birr Castle. [Not in chronological order.]

Letters and papers of the 5th Earl in connection with the trust set up under the will of [Lady Rosse’s relation], the late Mrs A.A. Hope of The Deepdene, Surrey (‘the Hope Trust’) [see also N/8. Not in chronological order.]

Letters and papers, mostly of the 4th and 5th Earls and Dr Otto Boeddicker, concerning Parsons family history and genealogy, including information about the Oxmantown/Phoenix Park property, sold by the elder branch of the Parsons family to the crown in 1672. Of particular interest is a paper entitled ‘How the Parsons, Earls of Rosse, got the Titles of Baron and Viscount of Oxmantown’.

1912-14 Letters and papers of the 5th Earl concerning his shares in the San Sebastian Development Syndicate and the International Nitrogen and Power Company Ltd; part of the operations of the latter involved a process for cutting peat, and there are a
number of letters to the 5th Earl and [Sir Charles Parsons?] on this subject.