Monday 1 June 2020

Tuam, Killala & Achonry Diocesan Archive catalogued

The RCB Library has announced that the historical diocesan archive for Tuam, Killala & Achonry has been arranged and listed, and the detailed 66-page catalogue is available online from today.

‘A map of the glebe land at Belcarra, surveyed for
Revd R W Maxwell’, Surveyed by John Vousdan,
June 1856, RCB Library D5/17/5/
When the Library reopens to the public, the collection will become available for researchers.

In the meantime, you can start searching via the RCBL's June Archive of the Month.

The project to gather, organise, list and make accessible the collection as a whole has taken 35-years!

Going back to mid-1980s, papers and volumes from the united diocese were gradually transferred from local diocesan custody into the RCB Library, which is the Church of Ireland’s record repository. As Irish genealogists know only too well, most of the records of the Church of Ireland dioceses up to and including the 1860s – the bulk of the collection transferred to the Public Record Office of Ireland – were destroyed by fire during the Civil War in 1922.

What survives is largely from the middle of the 19th century onwards, but with important pre-1860s survivals that provide a new and valuable body of evidence about how diocesan registries and their registrars conducted their business during the 18th and 19th centuries.