This whole thing started when I came across a reference in the Hayes Catalogue in the National Library of Ireland. I had been checking out the catalogue for every entry that might have any relation to the Killiney Bay area. This entry listed Reconnoisse militaire de la Baye de Killeeny (Killiney, Co. Dublin). By Major La Chaussée, Février, 1797. and said it was in the British Museum. So I wrote to the Museum (below) asking if I could get a copy and undertaking to pay for it.

The Museum duly acknowledged my letter (below), told me that there was a two week delay in dealing with correspondence, and, ominously, added that manuscripts could not be Xeroxed (photocopied).

The copy finally arrived in the post and I was put on standby for the bill. (below)

When I read the manuscript I realised what a fantastic discovery it was. It was a beautiful piece of work and set the bay in a military context from which your imagination would never again escape. So I set about asking the Museum what I would need to do if I wanted to publish it (below)

Much to my surprise there didn't seem to be any problem with publishing it and they would like details of where and when after the event so that they could immortalise me in the manuscript's bibliography. Fantastic. It also appeared that if I wanted to reproduce the manuscript, as distinct from pubishing its contents, I just had to ask the Museum secretary.

So I asked the Museum secretary.

And he didn't have a problem as long as I acknowledged the permission. And there was no fee.

Meanwhile the bill had not arrived and I was getting a bit nervous, so I wrote to find out what was going on.

It appeared that their billing department was a bit behind and I was told to wait for the bill. My recollection is that when it came it was for 2/6d, bloody great value.

Meanwhile I had asked what the current bibliograpy of the manuscript was, as it had occurred to me that it might already have been published. This was one occasion when a NO answer was the right one. It had not yet been published. I was in with a first.

So as soon as it was published, the following year, I banged off a letter with details for the manuscript's bibliography.

And it then appeared that I could also be read in the British Library.

So, for good measure, I also sent copies to the State Paper Office in Dublin Castle. (The Caitríona here is Caitríona Crowe. To this day she is playing a blinder on the Irish archival scene.)

Now this is a whole other story altogether.

It was quite clear from the manuscript that it had originally been accompanied by a map. But there was no trace of any map with the copy in the British Museum/Library.

So I wrote to every conceivable institution looking for it. That is, all the institutions that I, as a complete amateur at this game, could conceive of as being relevant. I drew a blank at every turn. It was very frustrating. Along the way I had seen a map La Chaussée had done in the south of Ireland and it was fabulous.

So, for about thirty years, no sign of the map.

Then Niall O'Donoghue waded into his researches on the background to No.7 Martello Tower. His sister, Sylvia, and her husband, Doug, both retired and living in London, haunted the Public Records Office in Kew, combed it with a fine-tooth comb, chewed the records, digested them and then spat them out and chewed them again. A tour de force. And, they finally came up with the map. And it didn't disappoint.

Not only was the map found, but the mystery of the location of the limekiln which gave its name to No.8 Battery was also solved.

La Chaussée had it (four-à-chaux) marked on his map of 1797 (below).

and Niall had it from military papers relating to 1845 when the army was selling land adjacent to the kiln to the railway company (below). The dotted vertical area at the left is the proposed line of the railway. The horizontal road is the Military Road, and the red building is the limekiln. The vertical blue line on the right is the coastline.

The location is at what is now the path down to the beach at the northern end of the Strand Road/Holy Child Convent bridge over the railway line.

And, once we knew where it had been, it turns out to have been shown on the OS maps all along.

In the case of the 1900 25" map it is actually marked as L.K. (below)

And on the 1837 6" it is shown but not marked (below).

So a lot of things "fell" into place. Well that's not fair. They were hacked, moulded and sculpted into place through the sterling efforts of Doug and Sylvia. To whom eternal thanks.

I was very curious about who this Major La Chaussée might be. I came to the conclusion that he had been a major in the French army, had fled France after the Revolution and was now working for the British. I was told that this would not be out of kilter with the times as there was as much, if not more, solidarity across the officer class in the various national armies as there was loyalty to their respective nations.

But when I first came across the title of the manuscript I didn't know what to expect. I assumed it was a survey done on behalf of the French military in advance of a seaborne attack. When I got the manuscript and started reading it, my excitement mounted. This appeared to be a Frenchman who was spying out the land in such detail as would blow your mind. He even knew who was living in each of the big houses. On that basis, it was an astounding document. I might even become famous myself.

However, my baloon was abruptly burst when I came to the end of the document and discovered Lord Carhampton's orders. The Major had actually been working for the British, surveying the Bay to determine how best to defend it against the French. Still, it was a find of sorts.

Anyway, I wrote to the Military Archive in the French National Library (La Bibliotheque Nationale), enclosing a copy of my article and asking for anything they might have on the Major. [Please ignore the grammar mistakes, I might even have corrected on or two in the top copy at the time. They are certainly glaringly obvious to me at this stage.]

I got a typically florid reply from the French. I was chuffed that they thanked me for my article which they said "usefully illuminated a period of Franco-Irish relations". Unfortunately, they said extensive research into their resources concerning French emigration to England and Ireland had thrown up nothing on La Chaussée.

It turned out that there were many families among the nobility with the name La Chaussée. They tentatively suggested that a particular guy called Charles, who had a distinguished military record, might be the one I was looking for, but there was, of course, no proof.

The only problem was that he retired in 1816 with the rank of captain and the title of chevalier de Saint-Louis, and there was no record of him emigrating to England.

I figure if he was still working for the French in 1816 he was hardly my guy. So there is still someone out there to be found in the records at some future date, and I'm still waiting on my Légion d'Honneur.