This section contains mainly legal documents including various types of deeds of title including leases, mortgages, wills, property abstracts, searches, and financial documents. The section also includes correspondence from solicitors engaged in legal work connected with the conveyance of property. The material is divided into two sub-series relating to the location of the plots of ground to which the document refers: Walkin Street (later Friary Street) and Pennyfeather Lane.
The subseries contains letters to Capuchin friars in Kilkenny concerning missions, retreats, the appointment of confessors and notices of jubilees, anniversaries and deaths. Many of the letters are from the Provincial Minster to the guardians of the Friary and relate to the internal administration of the Order. The section includes a large register book (CA KK/1/3/1) which contains copies of numerous circular letters and memoranda from Ministers General and Provincial Ministers.
The sub-series consists of records created during the routine management of Father Mathew Temperance Hall, Church Street, Dublin. This section includes the minutes of the weekly meetings of the Hall Committee.
A small collection of records relating to the routine repair, refurbishment and maintenance of the physical fabric of Father Mathew Hall, Church Street, Dublin.
This section includes records relating to accounts held by the Capuchin friars of Church Street mostly with the Smithfield branch of the National Bank in Dublin. The National Bank was merged into Bank of Ireland in 1969.
The Catholic Boys’ Brigade was founded by Fr. Benvenutus Guy OSFC (1860-1927), a Capuchin friar, in March 1894. Mainly composed of impoverished children from the Church Street area, the organisation was initially called St. Joseph’s Boys’ Brigade. The stated objects of the Brigade were ‘to crush vice and evil habits among boys, to instruct them thoroughly in the Christian doctrine … to give them habits of obedience, discipline, and self-respect and love for ecclesiastical authority and holy religion and to promote their moral, physical and temporal well-being’. The idea of forming a Brigade for the Catholic boys of Dublin sprung from the success achieved by the Protestant Boys’ Brigade. The first meeting hall of the Brigade was in a house in Smithfield which was rented at 5s per week. This meeting was held on 24 April 1894 with nine boys in attendance. The organisation grew rapidly. The Brigade Hall was soon relocated to a property (formerly a smelting foundry) at 156 Church Street which was purchased for the sum of £300. The organizing committee also succeeded in obtaining the use of an old vegetable market at the rear of the Hall which was used as a drill yard in 1895. The newly furnished hall and gallery could hold 1,500 attendees. A uniform was supplied to each enrolled boy consisting of a sash, a cap and a badge. An important aspect of the Brigade’s activities was physical exercise and participants routinely trained in ‘physical drilling, figure marching, squad and company drills’. A band was also established under the supervision of Fr. Sebastian O’Brien OSFC (1867-1931). A night-school for instructing illiterate young boys was founded in October 1899 and soon attracted thirty-five students. Religious instruction was supplied by the Capuchin friars. This was initially performed by Fr. Benvenutus Guy OSFC and later by Fr. Paul Neary OSFC (1857-1939). In 1904 the Church Street Capuchins transferred trusteeship of the properties owned by the Catholic Boys’ Brigade to lay stewardship.
