File 3 - House Account Book

60 pp; 35 cm x 14.5 cm; Bound volume; manuscript

This financial volume details the income and expenditure accounts of the Capuchin Friary in Rochestown, County Cork, opening with administrative entries from the mid-1890s.The income records document community revenues generated through masses, public collections, alms, questing, and sodality subscriptions. Notably, they also track financial interactions with the wider Irish Capuchin Province via intra-house donations and detail the commercial yields from the monastery’s agricultural operations through the sale of farm produce. Expenditure accounts detail routine daily maintenance costs, including clothing, foodstuffs, stationery, sundries, and wages for hired workmen. The volume’s opening page contains an extensive memorandum detailing the institutional debt management and land acquisition strategies enacted during the 1895 Provincial Chapter.

Key notations include:

A £200 relief grant issued by the Definition from the Cork house to offset existing monastery debts of over £270.

A major banking transaction involving a £4,400 loan from the Munster and Leinster Bank (at 4% annual interest) secured to purchase the fee simple of 56 acres of land. An updated definitorial directive mandates that this land remain unsold and instead be actively worked to support the Secondary School.

Inter-monastery funding structures, dictating ongoing monthly subscriptions to Rochestown from the Cork house (£10) and the Dublin house (£5), while exempting the Kilkenny house due to its own concurrent building projects.

A resolution to establish a network of lay guarantors contributing £1 annually to secure the friary’s day-to-day operating budget.

Numerous pages have been torn from the front of the volume. There are some scratches and dust accumulations to the covers. Internally, the volume is reasonably well bound.