Henrietta Lady Staples (née Ussher) (b. 1926)

Track 1: Henrietta ‘Hetty’ Lady Staples recalls memories of growing up in Cappagh House, and the Austrian refugees who lived there during the Emergency. She remembers her father Arnold Ussher collecting folklore from the ploughman, Tommy Murray. Track 2: The sale of the estate, and moving to Dublin in the 1940s with her parents. Track 3: She explains why her grandparents lived in Cappagh House, and her parents in the Hunting Lodge. Track 4: The maternal side of her family. Her mother was a member of the Whitehead family from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. Her mother dissuaded the IRA from burning the house during the Troubles. Lady Staples recalls her education by the Quakers in Newtown, Co Waterford. Track 5: Her marriage in 1951 to Gerald Staples, and moving to White Abbey in Belfast for twenty-six years. More memories of Cappoquin, with comments from Ann and Henry Chavasse. Track 6: Early transport – the sidecars, the traps and the motor cars. Track 7: Her first cousin, David Buxton, a keen photographer, and his visits to Cappagh. Track 8: She recalls stories about her great-grandfather Richard Ussher, an ornithologist and archaeologist, who built the new Cappagh House. Track 9: Her father, an intellectual, was a close friend of Samuel Beckett, and organised gatherings in Dublin. Track 10: Her own interest in writing and in poetry. Track 11: Old photographs and stories about her grandfather, Beverley Grant who was a school inspector in Lahore.