Dingley, Thomas (d. 1695?), antiquary and traveller, a native of Southampton, England, is known in Ireland for his account of a tour he made in Leinster and Munster in 1681. It contains much on Irish ways of life, particularly diet, dress, pastimes, customs, language, money, castles, churches, tombstones, fauna, and flora, and is the earliest survey of the antiquities of Ireland. Of greatest interest are his topographical illustrations – for their early date, quantity, and detail. They show, for example, St Patrick's cathedral and Trinity College, Dublin, mining at Silvermines, Co. Tipperary, a view of Limerick city and several ruined castles and churches. Extracts were printed in the 1850s and 1860s; the originals are in the National Library of Ireland (MS 392). When in Ireland, Dingley seems to have been a protégé of the 7th earl of Thomond (d. 1691). Little is known of Dingley's career: he entered Gray's Inn in 1670; he died, unmarried, at Louvain while travelling in the Spanish Netherlands some time before 14 May 1695. His name is sometimes wrongly given as ‘Dineley’.
Sources
E. P. Shirley and J. P. Prendergast (eds), ‘Extracts from the journal of Thomas Dineley, esquire, giving some account of his visit to Ireland in the reign of Charles II’, RSAI Jn., iv (1856–7), 143–6, 170–88; v (1858–9), 22–32, 55–6; vii (1862–3), 38–52, 103–9, 320–38; viii (1864–6), 40–48, 268–90, 425–46; ix (1867), 73–91, 176–204, esp. 203–4; F. E. Ball (ed.), ‘Extracts from the journal of Thomas Dineley, esquire’, RSAI Jn., xliii (1913), 275–309; NHI, iii