"A right of way" is the legal right, established by usage, of a person or persons to pass and repass through grounds and property belonging to another, a path or thoroughfare which one may lawfully make use of. In Ireland this has betimes erroneously been rendered cead siul (cead, permission, siul, walk) in Irish, instead of ceart siul "right of way" (ceart, right). Landowners have frequently attempted to prevent passage along these ways, leading to conflict and recourse to the law. "Kilgobbin Lane leading from the town of Kilgobbin past the old church led, in the eighteenth century, on up the hillside to Barnacullia. This route survives as a pedestrian right of way, but only because of the efforts of local people to keep it open. In 1861 the occupier of Fern Hill, Alderman Darley, sought to close off the access in order to enlarge his gardens and it was only after the matter came to court that the pathway was kept open. Later attempts by the Alderman's son, Judge Darley and his grandson, Edmund S. Darley, to divert and close off the access also led to a lawsuit." (On the Borders of the Pale: Rob Goodbody 1993). As in other such cases this led to spiteful screening and sinking of the lane to keep it separate from the demesne.
The Darleys were a family of master-masons and quarry owners who had been engaged in speculative building at the end of the eighteenth century on the north side of Dublin city. In 1752 Hugh Darley, the stonecutter, supervised the rebuilding of the western court of Trinity College, and was, together with his brother Hugh Henry, the carpenter, among Gandon's assistants in the building of the Custom House in 1781. George, the poet, born in 1795, was probably the most famous of them, while Frederick, an architect, was responsible for "the refined Greek Magnetic Observatory Hall of Trinity College, for the Merchants' Hall so agreeably sited by the Metal Bridge (1821), and for the bleak and uninspiring Library of the Kings' Inns (1827) as well as for the conservatories in the Botanic gardens at Glasnevin" (Dublin 1660-1860: Maurice Craig).
Dan Darley was listed in the 1659 "census" as titulado of East Gully, in the Co Cork parish of Ballymodan, and Darly, late of Plattine, was one of four titulados of Castletown, Co Offaly. Taylor & Skinners' Maps of the Roads of Ireland (1778) shows Darley Esq, near Rostrevor, Co Down, and the 1814 Directory has George Darley at Mountpleasant, Gilford, Co Down, and Richard Darley at Cambrick Ville, Co Louth. The 1836 Dublin Directory lists this surname eight times. At Swanbrook, Upper Leeson Street were Frederick, Alderman, chief magistrate, and Benjamin Guinness Darley, A.B., surgeon, of Lower Baggot Street. His middle name derives from the family connection with brewer Guinness, there being the Darley & Co, ale and table beer brewer, Stillorgan and Bray. Owners of Land of One Acre and Upwards (1876) shows Darley holdings in Cos Cork, Kerry, Wexford, Kilkenny, Kildare, and Antrim, but most numerously in Dublin county and city. There were holdings of 834 acres, 784, 663, 470 and so on down along. A single acre in the city was the property of Miss Maria Darley, Guinness & Mahon, Agents, College Green. William F. Darley was then at Fern Hill, Kilgobbin, on 110 acres.
Anna Maria Darley, a sister of the poet George, and of the Rev Charles Darley, first professor of English literature at Queen's College, Cork, married one Samuel Smith Boursiquot, a Dublin wine merchant of Huguenot extraction. It seems probable that her lover, a Trinity lecturer, and not the older Samuel, was the father of her son, Dion, born in 1820. Dion, who changed his surname to Boucicault, wrote and produced more than 140 plays, his three most famous Irish ones being The Colleen Bawn, Arrah na Pogue, and The Shaughraun.
Mac Lysaght's Surnames of Ire- land says that Darley, though an English surname, is better known in this country than in England. "It has been associated with Dublin and adjacent counties since the seventeenth century." The Dublin Guild Merchant Roll, c.1190-1265 lists Jordanus de Derleye for the year 1262, with the information in the index that this is of Derbyshire, also spelled Darley.