The Timothy Looney Papers

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 1-440) 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 (145-148) and the 1821 census records of Clogheen (526) 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 (209-378). The Looney collection further contains a small quantity of estate papers from Castle Hyde and Doneraile Court in county Cork, and Castle Otway in county Tipperary.