| Description | LE13 is a collection of solicitors' papers relating to the estates of the Daly family of Dunsandle, near Loughrea, Co Galway, and was acquired by the James Hardiman Library, NUI, Galway, in 1998. The collection is in two parts, the first part containing original deeds and the second part made up of legal and financial papers mainly relating to death duties.
The papers of a firm of solicitors', who by 1950, were known as Darley, Orpen and McGillycuddy and relating to the acquisition and settlement of some of the Daly of Dunsandle estates in the 19th and 20th centuries and to the payment of estate duties. The collection contains approximately 230 items, comprised of deeds, copy and draft legal documents, letters, Inland Revenue forms, schedules, accounts and manuscript notes.
The provenance of this collection of papers can be traced through a firm of solicitors, situated in Kildare Street, Dublin, in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of the papers were generated in the firm's office others accumulated there. This firm of solicitors was known by a number of different names but each was a continuation of the original firm. The following list has been compiled from the papers themselves and from Thom's Directory. The firm was located at 8 Kildare St, Dublin until 1887 , when it moved to 31 Kildare St and from 1924 the address was 30 and 31 Kildare St.
R Meade and Son 1854
Meade and Colles 1862-1892
Meade and Richardson 1893-1895
Richardson and Synnott 1896-1931
Darley, Orpen and Synnott 1924-1935
Darley, Orpen and McGillycuddy 1936-1951
The collection had been divided into two parts before its acquisition by NUI, Galway. The first part was made up of fifty deeds in chronological order and the second part contained loose legal papers, mainly relating to the payment of death duties. In this descriptive list the fifty deeds have been left as a separate entity (A) with some minor alterations in their arrangement. A chronological arrangement has been imposed on the second part of the collection (B), as no original order could be perceived. These legal papers have been divided into a number of sections according to their subject matter (1, 2, 3, etc). The last section has been further subdivided (15.1, 15.2, 15.3 etc). |
| Administrative History | The Daly family held the lands of Carnakelly, just north of the village of Kiltullagh, in Co Galway, from the early 17th century. James Daly, who became a Protestant in 1729, was Mayor of Galway in 1765 and was instrumental in cementing Daly control of the Galway Borough for the following fifty years. It is likely that the building of Dunsandle House was begun under James Daly and completed by his son Denis Daly. He had eight children by his second wife Catherine Gore. His eldest daughter Elizabeth married Peter Daly of Lismore and their son Anthony left his Lismore and Kilconnell estates to his first cousin James Daly of Dunsandle [LE13/5 &/12].
Denis Daly (1747-1791) of Dunsandle was MP for the Galway Borough while still a minor in 1767 and represented the county from 1768-1791. Tolerant in religious matters, a local historian writes that 'he is primarily remembered for his support of Grattan, Flood and Curran in their efforts to promote a Protestant version of Irish nationalism' . He amassed a considerable library of books at Dunsandle, which was sold after his death to help reduce the debts he had accumulated during his public life. In 1780 he married Lady Henrietta Maxwell, only daughter of the Earl of Farnham, an heiress with a large fortune. They also had eight children, six daughters and two sons, the second of who became the Protestant Bishop of the united dioceses of Cashel, Emly, Waterford and Lismore in 1843.
James Daly (1782-1847) saw the waning of Daly influence in the political representation of both the borough and county of Galway, at national level. A Tory, he represented the county until 1833 when he lost his seat to Catholic representatives. For his long years of Tory support he was created Baron Dunsandle and Clanconal in 1845. James Daly owned at least three estates in Co Galway by the second decade of the 19th century, known as the Dunsandle, Lismore and Kilconnell estates. Various annuities were charged on the Lismore and Kilconnell estates to repay loans [LE13/5-7, /10 & /14]. In 1831 he borrowed £42,000 from the Alliance Co to pay off some of his siblings' younger children portions, created by the terms of his parents' marriage settlement 1780 [LE13/9]. However the charges on the Daly estates were still very large in 1841, amounting to a total of £94,539 [LE13/20] and in 1846 James Daly, by then Baron Dunsandle, borrowed a further £120,000 from the Globe Insurance Co. James Lord Dunsandle died of typhus in 1847. By his wife Maria, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Skeffington Smyth he had seven children. One of their sons Charles died at the siege of Sebastopol, in December 1854, during the Crimean War [LE13/26].
Denis St George Daly (1810-1893), tried unsuccessfully to regain his father's seat at Westminster in the election of 1839, thereafter he was content to play a major part in local government. He was Chairman of the Board of Guardians for the Loughrea Union for quarter of a century and also served as the foreman of the Grand Jury of Co Galway. A large number of evictions took place on his estates during the Famine and tenants were also cleared off his lands in the following years when tillage declined and large grazing farms became popular with the landlord class. 'A notorious womaniser' Denis Lord Dunsandle had a long relationship with Mary Broderick (1823-1868), the daughter of a Catholic tenant farmer from Carnakelly. They had at least twelve children . In 1864 this couple were married and one daughter Anne was born in 1865. She was Denis Lord Dunsandle's only legitimate issue and she married George Valentine Martyn, of Curraghmore, near Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, in 1887.
Under the control of Denis Lord Dunsandle the estates continued to grow in size. He bought the townlands of 'Clorovan' [Clogharevaun] and Killarriv, part of the estate, of Peter Daly of Clooncah in 1854 [LE13/25] and the estate of the Rev Nicholas Devereux in the parish of Killimordaly, in 1860. Through his great aunt Ellis Smyth, who married Francis Mathew, 1st Earl of Llandaff in 1764, he inherited an estate in Co Tipperary in 1875 . In 1871 he borrowed £100,000 from the Representative Church Body to repay the loan to the Globe Insurance Co. Schedules of his estates were compiled at this time and show a total rental of £9,891 on the lands charged with this loan [LE13/30]. In 1879, after the bad harvest of that year, he allowed a reduction in his tenants' rents, however he was opposed to the collective bargaining demanded by the tenants in the following years but eventually had to settle with a rent reduction of 20% in 1887. By the early 1880s he was making provision for the settlement of his estates, including marriage portions for his daughters [LE13/38-40]. He handed over the management of his estates to his son William Daly. Denis Lord Dunsandle died on 11 Jan 1893 at Kearn's Hotel [the Kildare St Club], Dublin, where he had been living for some time. His brother Skeffington James Daly became 3rd Baron Dunsandle and Clanconal and on his death in 1894 was succeeded by his nephew, who died unmarried in 1911, when the title became extinct.
Denis Lord Dunsandle left his estates, which in 1876 were comprised of 33,543 acres in Co Galway and 3,514 acres in Co Tipperary, centred around the town of Thurles, in the joint possession of his two sons William Daly and Denis St George Daly. This arrangement was executed by a deed of settlement dated 29 July 1882. Further deeds of settlement and resettlement set up various trusts charged on the estates. Dunsandle demesne was separated from the main body of the estates. A draft deed records the provision Denis Lord Dunsandle made for the Dunsandle demesne, which was entailed on his heirs male and female. In this document Denis St George Daly was listed before his older brother William [LE13/59]. A reference in LE13/82, dated 1896, suggests that William Daly forfeited his half of the Dunsandle demesne by the acceptance of a sum of £8,000 in 1892. In the draft settlement of the Dunsandle demesne 1886 Roman Catholics were specifically barred from succeeding to Dunsandle and William Daly was a Catholic. The 'reputed' daughters of Denis Lord Dunsandle [and Mary Broderick] are named in this document [LE13/59]. Another son of Denis Lord Dunsandle was left a sum of £500 in his father's will [LE13/67 & /75] A draft deed, dated [April] 1893, records William Daly leasing Dunsandle from his brother Denis St George Daly, for the term of their joint lives at an annual rent of £400 [LE13/66].
William Daly (1850-1910) ran the Daly estates from the mid 1880s. Soon after their father's death he and his brother Denis St George Daly borrowed £20,000 from the Standard Life Assurance Co [LE13/42-44] and in November 1893 their sister Henrietta mortgaged her charge of £8,000 on the estates to her brothers [LE13/77]. When she married in July 1895 the mortgage was assigned to two trustees [LE13/45 & /79]. Under the provision of the various Land Acts, parts of the Daly estates began to be sold, for example, lands at Esker were sold to the Redemptorists [LE13/85]. William Daly purchased the Mitchell family's interest in the lands of Brackloon, Attimonmore South and Laragh in 1905 [LE13/48 & /86-/95]. In August 1893 William Daly married Julia Catherine Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Burke, bart, and they had four children.
His eldest son Denis William Daly (1894-1954), officially took over his half of the estates by a deed of conveyance and release in September 1919 [LE13/108]. Securities were isolated to meet the terms of his parents' marriage settlement providing jointure for his mother and younger children portions for his sister Mrs Simonds and his brother James Henry Daly [LE13/100 & /119]. By 1923 most of the estates had been sold [LE13/105] and were represented by investments in stocks and shares, generally referred to as 'securities'. Denis William Daly was a Colonel in the 8th Hussars and was stationed in Mesopotania in 1921 [LE13/112]. He lived at Glenmore, near Drogheda in Co Louth [LE13/105 & /119] in the 1920s and later in Blessington, Co Wicklow. In 1932 he married Maeb Virginia Lennon and had two daughters.
Denis St George Daly (1862-1942) had a military career in the 18th Hussars. He lived in England for most of his adult life at Over Norton Park, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. After inheriting Dunsandle in 1911, he lived there for a short time from 1912-1914 and in 1919-1920 for part of the year. In 1927 he handed over the house and demesne to his son Denis Bowes Daly, who was about to marry Diana Lascelles. When Denis Bowes Daly came of age in January 1921, Denis St George Daly was prepared to hand over his entire life interest in the estates to his son if that would save paying the higher rate of succession duty. When Denis Bowes Daly married in 1927, Dunsandle demesne was disentailed and funds were transferred to support the marriage settlement. There was a further transfer of securities to Denis Bowes Daly by his father in 1932. Many papers in the latter part of this collection document some aspects of these transactions. A further body of material relates to the payment of death duties on the real and personal property of Denis St George Daly who died in December 1942 and on his property charged with jointure for his wife Rose Zara [Brassey] and portions for his younger children. On the death of his widow in 1950 more estate duty had to be paid on her jointure.
Denis Bowes Daly (1900-1984) served as ADC to the Viceroy of India 1918-1927. After his marriage in 1927, he lived at Dunsandle and played an active role among the hunting fraternity of the Galway Blazers, serving as either master or joint master from 1928-1939 and 1966-1948. He sold Dunsandle demesne in the early 1950s and the house was soon afterwards partially demolished. |