  We present parallax observations and a detailed model atmosphere analysis of
54 cool and ultracool ($T_{\rm eff}$ < 4000 K) white dwarfs (WDs) in the solar
neighbourhood. For the first time, a large number of cool and ultracool WDs
have distance and tangential velocities measurements available. Our targets
have distances ranging from 21 pc to >100 pc, and include five stars within 30
pc. Contrary to expectations, all but two of them have tangential velocities
smaller than 150 km s$^{-1}$ thus suggesting Galactic disc membership. The
oldest WDs in this sample have WD cooling ages of 10 Gyr, providing a firm
lower limit to the age of the thick disc population. Many of our targets have
uncharacteristically large radii, indicating that they are low mass WDs. It
appears that we have detected the brighter population of cool and ultracool WDs
near the Sun. The fainter population of ultracool CO-core WDs remain to be
discovered in large numbers. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope should find
these elusive, more massive ultracool WDs in the solar neighbourhood.
