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Brochure advertising the sale of Ards House and Estate. The brochure has photographic prints of Sheephaven Bay, Ards House, and the associated workmen’s cottages. It is noted that the sale includes 2,000 acres. Ards House comprises a stone-built Georgian style residence with ‘six reception rooms, a billiard room, 19 principal bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a nursery suite, splendid servant’s quarters, ample garages and stabling, 20 cottages and beautiful pleasure grounds’. The brochure provides details on various facets of the property and notes that the owner (Lady Ena Stewart-Bam) ‘has been in negotiation with the Irish Land Commission, who are quite prepared to give every facility to an intending purchaser’. The agent is noted as Messrs Battersby & Co., 39 Westmoreland Street, Dublin. The brochure also notes:
• The sale of the historic ‘Doe Castle’ ruin with about 30 acres of demesne land.
• The potential sale of ‘furniture which includes some old and rare pieces and a valuable library’.
• That the ‘Ards Estate has been in the possession of the Stewart family for about 150 years. The first Stewart of Ards and the First Marquess of Londonderry were only brothers. The present head, Lady Stewart-Bam of Ards, is selling the property as her husband’s chief interests are in South Africa’.
• That the price for the freehold is £50,000 including sporting and fishing rights.

A photocopy of an article titled ‘Ards House’ published in 'The Father Mathew Record' (Feb. 1967), pp 17-24. The article was written by Edward MacIntyre with an introduction by Fr. Benedict Cullen OFM Cap. The article provides a history of Ards House and the former Stewart-Bam estate. The article headings are as follows: The Lifford Inquisition, John (‘half-hanged’) MacNaughton, The builder of Ards House, Road from Letterkenny, Magistrate, Beggard the Estate, Uncle of Lord Castlereagh, Land Acts, Chapel and Choir, and A Greater Landlord. The article also publishes two images of Lady Ena Stewart and the staff of Ards House.

A letter from Dermot MacIntyre to Fr. David Kelleher OFM Cap. referring to the history of the former Stewart-Bam residence in Ards. An extract from the letter reads:
'In regard to Ards and Ards House, I have just found an old notebook of my father’s. He used to jot down bits and pieces on anything to hand and in this old notebook he has an entry dated, Friday, December 30, 1910. He writes: "Was at a dance in Ards House last night given by Sir Pieter Bam. Charlie Coll and I played for them. Bam came in about 9 o’clock. I did not like it all but would rather be in the poorest thatch house in Doe, with the Gaelic sounding round me, than in the midst of it all. Bam does his best to unbend, but it is plainly an effort and he seems to know himself that it won’t be successful. His wife is outrageously proud. She sat all the time like an incarnate goddess and noticed no one. Such pride is a sin against Heaven. You would think the ordinary people were less than dogs to her. Her sister is not one whit better"'.
Further extracts from his father’s journal refer to the landlord’s relationships with the workers and tenants on the Ards estate, to the histories of various local churches, to a Feis at Doe Castle in 1910, and to the building of the Lough Swilly railway in Donegal.

An article on the history of the Wray family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Wrays were the owners of the Ards Estate before it was purchased by the Stewarts in 1781. It is noted that in about 1700 William Wray ‘bought 5,000 acres of land between Dunfanaghy and Doe from William Sampson’. The article adds: 'In 1781 the estate was sold to Mr Alexander Stewart, brother of the first Marquess of Londonderry and uncle of the infamous Lord Castlereagh, for the sum of £13,250 in order to meet the owner’s debts'. An appendix to the article includes some brief notes on the Stewarts of Ards compiled by Fr. T.J. Walsh, a diocesan priest in Cork.

A pamphlet dedicated by the author to Casement’s ‘dearest surviving friend on earth his loving sister Mrs Newman’. The text was written by John Clarke (1868-1934), a County Antrim-born nationalist and journalist who wrote numerous articles on Gaelic cultural revivalist subjects, frequently using the penname ‘Benmore’.

Report on the prospects of the South African mission by Fr. Edward Walsh OFM Cap. and Fr. Canice Bourke OFM Cap., St. Mary’s, Cape Town for Fr. Kevin Moynihan OFM Cap., Provincial Minister. The report refers to a meeting with Bishop Bernard Cornelius O’Riley, Vicar Apostolic of the Cape of Good Hope, to discuss the areas (Athlone and Parow) which have been offered to the Irish Capuchins. A description of both districts and their populations is given. The financing of the proposed mission is also referred to. The report notes that ‘there is a well-disposed Catholic in Athlone, a Mr. Murphy, who came to the Cape during the Boer War, and settled here’. The report also affirms that ‘the people seem to want us badly in Athlone – there certainly is a hunger for a priest there’.

Booklet by Fr. Owen O’Sullivan OFM Cap. providing a brief history of the Irish Capuchin missions in Africa. The publication is divided into the following sections: A seed is sown; Key points in the Irish Capuchin Mission to South Africa; Irish Capuchin Mission in the Cape Flats; List of Capuchins on Missionary Work in Cape Town, March 1980; Growth and development of Missionary Work in Zambia; Mission stations in the Diocese of Livingstone; List of Capuchins involved in missionary work in the Diocese of Livingstone.

Missionary Bulletin leaflet, No. 11 (Oct. 1979). The bulletin notes the Golden Jubilee of the arrival (4 Feb. 1929) of the Irish Capuchins in Cape Town and gives a brief history of landmarks in the South African mission

Calendar of Irish Capuchin missionaries in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and South Africa from 1929-38 giving details of where each friar was stationed and the time spent at each mission station. Includes a clipping of an article on the Irish Capuchin mission in Barotseland, Northern Rhodesia, taken from 'The Father Mathew Record'. The extract is extant on pp 42-5 in the volume compiled Fr. Albeus McQuillan OFM Cap. (1912-1989).

Copy letter to Fr. Juan Antonio de San Juan en Persiceto OFM Cap., Minister General of the Capuchin Franciscans, from Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap., Capuchin Friary, Rochestown, Cork, referring to the decision to send him to America. He claims that ‘this decision would seem to be part of the penalisation which has been meted out to me, probably because of my activities during the period of hostilities in Dublin, last summer’. Fr. Albert encloses a statement, ‘The Case of Father Albert, O.S.F.C.’, defending his actions and declaring his ‘absolute impartiality’ during the War of Independence and later at the outbreak of Civil War hostilities in Dublin in 1922. Reference is also made in the statement to his previous pastoral work with republicans in the period from 1916. Fr. Albert declared: ‘The war of repression which England waged on Ireland since 1916, did not narrow my vision of duty. My mission as a priest was not to any one section or party, it was to “embrace all in one sentiment of charity”. … When feeling was bitterest against the “G-men” – the secret Police” – I saved one of them from death, and also facilitated the marriage of a member of the British Auxiliaries, who had won for themselves as hated a reputation as had the notorious “Black and Tans”’. Fr. Albert also emphasized his role as an intermediary between the Free State Army and irregular republicans during the attack on the Four Courts and in subsequent actions in Dublin during the initial phases of the Civil War. The copy concludes with a statement that the original document is held in the Capuchin General Archives, Rome (Annus: 1923; Prov. Hiberniae; Section 4). This copy has been made for the convenience of the Archives of the Irish Capuchin Province 'with the permission of the Most Rev. Fr. General, Fr. Benignus of S. Ilario Milanese OFM Cap.’. The certified copy is signed by Fr. Conrad O’Donovan OFM Cap., Definitor General, 28 July 1958.