The Coghill Family lived in Belvedere House in Drumcondra, Dublin. Edith Somerville's sister, Hildegarde, married Egerton Bushe
Coghill, and the collection includes material relating to Somerville. It also contains a wide range of items that provide insight into
the life of a landed family in Ireland in the 18th and 19th century. This collection was donated to QUB Special Collections in 2017
and a descriptive list is being compiled.
This extensive collection of family papers is comprised of a wide range of correspondence, photographs, drawings, prints and marriage documents, and is an important adjunct to the papers of Edith Somerville already held in the Special Collections Library at Queen’s. The Coghill Archive includes a substantial amount of family correspondence involving Somerville, particularly letters between her and her sister, Hildegarde. The family correspondence is all the more interesting as some of it crosses generations: siblings, parents, and children, as well as husbands and wives. The Coghill Archive provides insight into the life in of Irish landed family, and because of the unusual amount of material relating to children we gain deeper insight to other aspects of that family life. It also includes evidence of the different experiences of members of the family during World War I. Members of the Coghill family were among the first to use cameras in 19th century Ireland; Sir John Jocelyn Coghill is recognised as a pioneer of photography in Ireland. This collection includes several boxes of glass slides (19th century) and some photographic prints which will shed light not just on the day-to-day interests of this family, but will also provide insight to their lives (settings, dress, props), how they saw themselves and how they wished to be perceived. There are several heraldic items, namely a grant of arms on vellum to Sir Josiah Coghill-Cramer of Belvedere House, Drumcondra, and of Kilkenny, Bart. Other items include royal letters patent dated 8 June 1782, creating John Coghill of Richings in Yorkshire a baronet and several documents detailing indentures from 1700 through to mid-1800s, as well as marriage settlements, property deeds, leases, assignments and surrenders. [grants.fnl.org.uk]
Some of the information listed from this repository has been extracted by the Women's History Project
from lists available in the library. It must be remembered that due to time constraints, not
all items in this repository were examined individually. We are grateful for the assistance
provided by Mary Kelly, librarian.