In Ireland during the 19th century many worthy persons took to ma king daily observations of the weather, and their long-term records are a valuable legacy to us today. Two families, both with scientific leanings, have been quite remarkable in this respect.
The Earls of Rosse are well known for having established one of the best-equipped astronomical observatories in Europe in Birr, Co Offaly. They also kept records of the local weather down the years.
Their series of observations began in 1845, and Birr eventually became the only inland weather station in Ireland whose reports were sent several times a day by telegraph to London. The long sequence of observations from Birr is continued nowadays at the official meteorological station just outside the town.
The Coopers also had an interest in astronomy. This family had received their lands in Co Sligo in the 17th century as a reward for military service to the crown.
By the early 1800s they were well established at Markree Castle, near Collooney; they were progressive farmers and improving landlords and, like many of their class around that time, they dabbled as amateurs in many of the sciences.
Edward Cooper was born in 1798 and as a young man in the early 1820s travelled extensively in the Middle East and Africa. He took over the Markree Castle estates in 1830 on the death of his father, installed a telescope and directed there an observatory whose reputation for many years almost equalled that at Birr.
More importantly for meteorologists, however, Cooper established Markree Castle as a weather station whose meteorological records were to be unrivalled in their duration any where in the west of Ireland, and rarely equalled in the country generally.
Weather observations had, in fact, begun in 1824, but the readings were sporadic. Under Edward Cooper's stewardship, however, a faultless series of daily readings was produced, lasting from 1833 until his death in 1863.
His successor, Lieut Col Edward Henry Cooper, his nephew, had little interest in either astronomy or weather. The observatory was dismantled, the only part of it remaining being the massive stonework to support the telescopes, but somehow the meteorology continued, although the reports once again became sporadic.
Edward Henry's reign at Markree lasted until 1874, and then, meteorologically speaking, things improved again. Happily, from 1875 onwards a complete, continuous record of the daily weather at Collooney is available, right up to the present day.
It is the only series of weather observations from the west of Ireland that has lasted for longer than a century.