Legal Structures at Airfield:

 

 

There was a time in Ireland when a person’s dying wish was sacred and, from the information available to us, the dying wish of Miss Letitia and Miss Naomi Overend was that the house and land at Airfield should be preserved.  

 

In 1974 (Miss Letitia was 94), the Trust was set up.  A letter dated 13^th June, 1974 is attached to the Trust Deed, signed by Mr Raymond A. French (the Overend solicitor at the time) which states that “The prime Charitable object is to retain the grounds around Airfield as an open space for the use at the Trustees’ discretion of the various objects set out in the Deed of Trust.”  Unfortunately, the Trust deed itself gives the Trustees wide powers and does not mention the prime Charitable Object as being the retention of the grounds.  The original trustees were Letitia and Naomi Overend, The Honourable Theodore Cunningham Kingsmill More, William Millar and Raymond Arthur French.  In addition a Company was also set up, owned by the Trust - initially it was unlimited, but it subsequently became a limited company. 

 

The two legal structures at Airfield are therefore:-

 

Dromartin Trust

Charity Reference:  CHY 11241

 

Dromartin Estates Co. Ltd.

Company No. 21980

Charity Reference:  CHY 6637

 

Both have charitable status, which means that they are exempt from most taxes and in particular from Capital Gains Tax on investments.

 

Miss Letitia died in 1977 and Miss Naomi in October 1993.  The total area of Airfield land at Miss Naomi’s death was around 50 acres.  Large portfolios of investments were left to the Trust and the Company – see the link to “Finance at Airfield”.

 

Around 1997 discussions were ongoing about the amalgamation of the Company and the Trust.  In 1999 a new Memorandum and Articles of Association of Dromartin Estates Co. Ltd. were drawn up.  The objects of the Trust were subsumed into the Memorandum of Association:-

 

2 (c)     The inserted clause specifies that the Company will promote “such other solely charitable objects in Ireland as are specified in the Deed of Settlement made the 16^th May 1974 between Letitia Overend and Naomi Overend of the one part and Letitia Overend, Naomi Overend, the Honourable Theodore Cunningham Kingsmill Moore, William Miller and Raymond Arthur French on the other part.”

 

The Memorandum does not specify that the “prime Charitable object is to retain the grounds around Airfield as an open space for the use at the Trustees’ discretion of the various objects set out in the Deed of Trust”.  

 

The Memorandum of Association of Dromartin Estates Co. Ltd. drafted in 1999 relegates what was the prime charitable object of the Trust to third place in the list of objects, without specifically mentioning it.  The educational objectives, which so far as can be ascertained were chosen to ensure the Trust had charitable status, do not seem to have been as important to the Overends, but they have been given prominence by the trustees. 

 

Individual trustees have said on several occasions that they are legally entitled to sell the whole of Airfield and to carry out the objects of the Trust by funding education from an office or from “a farm in Wicklow”.