The Airfield Archive

Identity Statement

Content & Structure

• Scope & Content: Overend family of Dundrum, South Dublin ↴

  The Airfield Archive consists of over 25 thousand unique items, including 7,500 photographs. It includes large collections of letters, diaries, registers, notebooks, invoices, financial accounts, scrapbooks, postcards, maps, newspaper cuttings, slides and photographs, collected and retained by the Overend family. It also comprises items dating from the early 19th century from the Gray and Butler families and from the mid 19th century for the Letham and Overend families, including images, diaries and letters of individuals from each of these families, giving an insight into their daily lives.
  The main part of the collection dates from the later 19th century and the 20th century. This includes documents of Trevor and Lily Overend, their siblings and daughters.
  Documents of interest include the love letters of Trevor and Lily Overend, before and during their marriage, their letters to their daughters Letitia and Naomi as children, and letters and diaries of their Aunts Helen Bulter, Fanny Butler and Minnie Overend.
  There are also a large number of documents belonging to T.B.G (Tommy) Overend, including his detailed diaries of his life in India, his letters home and documents relating to his business affairs.
  In addition to the family papers, Letitia and Naomi Overend also kept a large number of items relating to their hobbies, interests and philanthropic works, which make up a valuable piece of social history of the period. Most notable are the records of the Irish War Hospital Supply Depot, including a letter book with requests for supplies from army hospitals in France, Belgium and Britain (PP/AIR/2464), the Dundrum branch of the Woman’s National Health Association, the Saint John Ambulance Brigade and the Children’s Sunshine Home. Also of interest are the letters of Fanny Butler during the 1916 rising in Dublin and her subsequent letters to the army lieutenant who was stationed in her garden (PP/AIR/98), letters to Lily Overend from young men fighting in World War I (PP/AIR/907-917), a register of members of the Alexandra College Nursing Division who became V.A.D.’s (PP/AIR/2426), Minnie Overend’s diary of her life in Egypt (PP/AIR/242), letters from Jack B. and Lily Yeats (PP/AIR/985) and a register of members of the Dundrum branch of the Children’s League of Pity (PP/AIR/2824).
  The Overend sisters also kept a large number of documents relating to their hobbies including cars, travel, gardening and the farm. Included in the travel documents are photographs, booklets, correspondence, postcards, tickets and ephemera picked up along that way, including items from Letitia Overend’s World Tour with the British Medical Association in 1935, and Naomi Overend’s trip to India in 1936 and to Australia and New Zealand in 1956. They also kept documents relating to Gilbert and Sullivan operas and the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, including programmes and photographs and letters from their friends in the Opera Company, Dorothy Gill and Marjorie Eyre.
  Documents relating to cars and vintage car rallies include: correspondence, invoices, notebooks, flyers, newsletters, expenditure books, programmes for rallies and a series of documents relating to Letitia Overend’s Rolls Royce including the original guarantee for the car issued by Rolls Royce Limited on the 9th of June 1927 (PP/AIR/3152).
  The Archive also contains documents relating to the farm at Airfield, including correspondence, invoices, notebooks, photographs and files on milk production and the Jersey herd.

• Appraisal Destruction ↴

  Permanent Retention

• Arrangement ↴

  As much of the original order of this collection was lost, it has now been arranged by individual or function and then arranged chronologically by document type. Documents have been divided by family or creating organisations consisting of the Gray, Butler, Letham, Barton and Overend families. Organisations include The Irish War Hospital Supply Depot, the Saint John Ambulance Brigade, the Children’s Sunshine Home, the Woman’s National Health Association and other Charities. Where necessary sections are further divided into sub-sections by function and document type.
  Due to her close association with the family, documents relating to Emily Provis have been arranged with the Overend family papers. Correspondence has been arranged with the papers of the recipient, with the exception of official correspondence received by Letitia Overend in her role in the Saint John Ambulance Brigade and the Children’s Sunshine Home. This has been arranged with the papers of the organisation. Letters addressed to both Letitia and Naomi Overend have been arranged with Letitia’s correspondence. Official papers relating to the purchase, valuation and management of property have been placed together as the papers of the Dromartin Estates Company and Airfield Trust, which also includes financial and legal papers relating to Airfield.

Conditions of Access & Use

Allied Materials

Descriptive Control Area