THE OWNER
A Thomas Campion is recorded on the 1901 census at Seskin, Co. Kilkenny, as an unmarried agricultural labourer, along with his older and younger unmarried sisters, occupying a four-room stone or brick house (2nd class), with a slate or tile roof and four outbuildings. They were Roman Catholic, could all read and write, and owned their own house. A decade later, a Thomas Campion is still living in the same house, but this time he is described as a farmer. In March 1916 he became the owner of the 39-acre property at Seskin. Interestingly, this was a non-residential property.
THE REGISTRAR
As the Clerk of Crown and Peace for Kilkenny County and City, Henry Hoadly Langrishe (1872–1958) signed our document in 1921. A relative of the Knocktopher Langrishes, he studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and became a solicitor in 1897. He was decorated following the Boer War by Edward VII, and after a short stint in the colonial civil service in Africa he returned to Ireland and became solicitor to the New Ross Harbour Commissioners from 1905 to 1916. We know from the Incorporated Law Society Gazette for 1926 that he continued as Clerk of Crown and Peace in Kilkenny until that same year, when he donated some of his legal books to the Law Society. He was not appointed as a County Registrar when the colonial legal system was reformed in 1926 but had the right under the Treaty to retire with pension.
THE SOLICITOR FOR THE OWNER
Registered on the 1911 census as a 54-year-old Catholic solicitor with offices in Parliament Street, Kilkenny, Michael John Buggy was married and resided in a twelve-room private dwelling (1st class, with stable) along with his nephew and niece, who were born in England, plus a general servant. His nephew, John William (21), was also a solicitor, having completed his apprenticeship in his uncle’s office, passing his final examination in the same year.
THE LAND
Land Registry Folio KK7407, containing 14.5 hectares, still exists (only a couple of acres seem to have been reassigned in the intervening century). No dwellings are marked on maps of the property either then or now.