LOCAL HISTORY: Overview of the Reside Collection at local museum

Samuel Wilson Reside was the architect of the new building for Foster’s department store erected in Hill Street in Newry in 1907.

There are around 12,000 documents in the Collection dating from 1708 to the 1990s, which are wide ranging and shed light on many aspects of local history in the Newry and Mourne area.

Estate Records

The papers include estate records such as rental books, titles deeds, maps and estate surveys. These relate to the Earls of Kilmorey, Marquises of Downshire, the Hall family of Narrow Water and the Ross family of Rostrevor. The Collection also contains some documents relating to the Fivey, Meade and Richardson estates and a number of smaller landowners. The Collection includes a set of maps of the estates of William Nedham around of the town of Newry dating from the late 18th century and rentals for the Earl of Kilmorey’s Newry estate covering the years of the Great Famine. Also included are a number of ink and watercolour maps relating to the Hall estate at Mullaghglass dating from 1835.

Samuel Wilson Reside oversaw the installation of a memorial window to Dean Swanzy in St. Mary’s Parish Church in 1936.

Encumbered Estate Records

In the years following the Great Famine, many large landed estates were burdened with debt. In 1849 the Encumbered Estates Court was established to sell off estates on behalf of landlords who could no longer afford to keep their land. Prior to the sale of the estate a detailed rental or catalogue of the estate was produced. The Collection includes many of these rentals from the locality and cover both urban and rural areas around Newry, Warrenpoint and Rostrevor (county Down) and also Omeath, Carlingford and Ballymascanlon (county Louth). These are invaluable for any researcher studying the area in the immediate aftermath of the Famine.

Architectural Plans and survey maps

The architectural plans in the Collection drawn by Samuel Wilson Reside and Major Gerald Reside range in date from the late 19th century to the 1980s. These relate to a broad range of architectural and engineering projects including private houses, schools, commercial and business practices including factories and industrial installations. There are a large number of hand drawn maps which were prepared for a variety of purposes including land conveyance, as evidence in legal cases and to illustrate engineering and architectural projects.

Map prepared by Gerald Wilson Reside in 1935 of commercial premises on the corner of Hill Street and The Mall in Newry.

Land Purchase Commission Papers

The Land Commission was set up as a result of the Land Act of 1881 and was empowered to purchase estates from landlords and to transfer them into tenant ownership. Many of the Land Commission papers in the Reside Collection relate to the Northern Ireland Land Act of 1925 and most of these relate to land formerly owned by the Earls of Kilmorey, the Hall family at Narrow Water and the Richardsons at Bessbrook.

Legal papers

Papers from local legal cases are also an important element of the Collection. Of particular interest are papers relating to a legal case resulting from the Lady Cavan shipping disaster in Newry Port in 1937 and a celebrated case relating to the Fairy Glen, near Rostrevor in 1939. In both instances, these papers complement relevant material among the newspaper cuttings in the Collection.