Did you know that the oldest record we hold relating to a woman is a memoranda roll from 1309? That the place of Countess Markievicz’s birth is given incorrectly on the cover of her prison file? That you can examine the will of Princess Grace of Monaco in our Reading Room? Or that we hold the records of the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers until it was wound up in 1993?
The following guide is not an exhaustive list of all our holdings but rather is intended as a signpost pointing you in the direction of collections containing records relating to women. These reflect the richness of our archives relating to women across departmental, business, legal, religious, medical and private source records. They cover a diversity of subjects and range in format from photos, newspaper reports and government records to prisoner files, personal letters and deportation orders.
Read on for more information on record sources held in the National Archives relating to women’s history which shed light on the lives of women in Ireland.
