Identity Statement
| Title | Conway Maxwell Collection |
| Archive Reference | IE IFA/11 |
| Web Link to this Entry | https://iar.ie/archive/conway-maxwell-collection |
| Creation Dates | 1938-1975 |
| Extent Medium | 44 rolls of 16mm colour + black-and-white reversal (approximately four and a half hours) |
Context
Creator(s): Conway Maxwell
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Administrative History ↴
Conway Maxwell (1913-1994) was a film enthusiast, amateur naturalist, conservationist and electrical engineer who lived most of his life in Dublin. He had a lifelong interest in amateur filmmaking and documented his family life and world travels. Maxwell was raised on a large farm in Corduff, Lusk, Co. Dublin. In the early 1930s he qualified as an electrical engineer, in England, and went to work for the English Electric Company until the end of the decade. He spent 1939 on business in the Middle East. In 1940, Conway became ill on his travels and had to return to Ireland. He recuperated at the family farm in Lusk. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Maxwell’s eldest brother Henry, who had worked and managed the family farm, joined the British Army. Conway stayed on the farm and eventually took over its management. According to his widow, Daphne, Conway enjoyed the outdoor life immensely: ‘He had an inquisitive mind and knew something about almost anything anyone bothered to ask him about.’ At the end of the war, when his brother returned to manage the farm, Conway resumed his career in electrical engineering, this time with the ESB in Merrion Square. In Dublin, he developed an interest in the preservation of the city’s Georgian buildings, and on his lunch breaks he used his Bell & Howell camera to film Dublin Corporation’s demolition of Georgian houses. Despite being a non-professional, Conway Maxwell was a skilled filmmaker who understood composition and exposure and frequently used a tripod, and shot in long takes. -
Archival History ↴
Daphne V. M. Maxwell -
Immediate Source Acquisition ↴
Donation
Content & Structure
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Scope & Content: Conway Maxwell ↴
The content can be divided into three categories: family activities and holidays, business travel, and the indigenous flora of the West of Ireland. The earliest footage from the Collection is dated January 1939 and was shot during a year spent on business in the Middle East. Conway travelled across Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Iran and Iraq, where he filmed different aspects of urban and rural life, including street scenes from Constantinople and Beirut, a storm on the sea at Tyre, a young boy walking along a Sidon pathway lined with palm-trees, and fishermen casting out lines and small nets.
Conway documented the period of his life spent recuperating on the family farm in the early 1940s with a short film called Story of a Year, a depiction of a working farm through the four seasons. There are spring flowers blossoming, fields being ploughed and, at the end, a threshing sequence made dynamic with some striking montage.
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Appraisal Destruction ↴
Permanent Retention -
Accruals ↴
None expected -
Arrangement ↴
The content can be divided into three categories: family activities and holidays, business travel, and the indigenous flora of the West of Ireland.
Conditions of Access & Use
| Access Conditions | By appointment |
| Conditions Governing Reproduction | Clear with donor |
| Creation Dates | 1938-1975 |
| Extent Medium | 44 rolls of 16mm colour + black-and-white reversal (approximately four and a half hours) |
Allied Materials
There are no Allied Materials
Descriptive Control Area
| Archivist Note | Columb Gilna |
| Rules/Conventions | ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description. 2nd ed. Ottawa: International Council on Archives, 2000. |
| Date of Descriptions | 40575 |