Henry Conyngham, 8th Marquess Conyngham

I first met Henry Mount Charles, as he then was and remained so for many people, in 1983 in my mother-in-law’s house when he dropped in to wish my sister-in-law, the late Susan McKeever, a happy birthday. Noticing two bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau on the dining table, he wondered aloud “how long that stuff lasts”. My mother-in-law replied “About ten minutes around here.”

Since Henry Conyngham died, at the relatively early age of 74, a frequent description of him has been “dashing”. Earlier in his life he had the looks of a Jane Austen military hero and, indeed, his great-great-great-great grandfather served with distinction at the Battle of Waterloo.

Slane Castle estate came into the family by way of another battle, of the Boyne in 1690, at which Conynghams fought on both sides. His direct ancestors had the fortune to be on team William of Orange and were granted lands in Meath.

Despite a hugely aristocratic lineage, and a great deal of Scottish and English blood, Henry was first and foremost an Irishman, albeit an Irishman who resented being considered, by some, an alien in his own land. In the weeks before the first Slane Castle concert, when Thin Lizzy played in 1981, some locals opposing the event told him to “go back to England” and he was pilloried when he announced that he would take his seat in the House of Lords when he succeeded his father as the 8^th Marquess Conyngham – before hereditary peers lost the automatic right to take their seats.

At the time he said to me “well, they have been interfering in this country for centuries, so why shouldn’t I interfere in theirs?”

Born in 1951 at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, to the wildly glamorous and beautiful Eileen Newsom and her husband Frederick, Earl of Mount Charles, universally known as “Mount”, he was sent to Headfort, near Kells, then preparatory school for solely for boys intended for English public schools. It had been founded by another grand Meath lady, the Marchioness of Headfort.

Unlike his father, he didn’t go to Eton but instead to Harrow where he first became truly conscious of his Irishness. Although he was Viscount Slane, and listed as such by the school, he was teased about his nationality. He went on to study at Harvard and then moved back to London where he worked in publishing at Faber & Faber. Here he developed a reputation as a tough negotiator in the rights department.

Married to Juliet Kitson and working in a congenial environment, his pleasant London life came to an abrupt end when his father never the easiest of men – announced that he was to become a tax exile in the Isle of Man. This resulted from the Fine Gael government’s introduction of a wealth tax in 1976 and Mount was a very wealthy man owning, in addition to the Slane estate, extensive landholdings in Kent.

Aged 25, Henry was told to come home and take over. Otherwise, the castle and the estate would be sold. It was an ultimatum that he resented and he always had a rather distant relationship with his father. Mount was notoriously unfaithful during his twenty year marriage to Eileen and Henry was deeply troubled by their divorce in 1970. Mount would go on to have three further wives, marrying lastly in 1997 Annabelle Agnew who is said to have been the only one who could keep him in line.

Although resentful of the position he was placed in by his father, he rose to the challenge. Had Mount not decided to move to the Isle of Man, Henry might have deferred moving back to Ireland for many years, his father dying in 2009. Slane Castle would be a very different place.

Soon after his return, Henry realised that the natural amphitheatre in which the castle stands, was an ideal venue for large concerts. And despite the unreliability of Irish weather, none of the Slane concerts, from Thin Lizzy 1981 to Harry Styles in 2023 has been a washout – although Bob Dylan’s appearance in 1984 was preceded, the night before, by a riot in the village which I witnessed. It largely involved teenagers from Northern Ireland and the absence of any Garda apart from the much respected Sergeant Clarke. By the time reinforcements arrived, in mini-buses from Dublin, it was in full flow. I witnessed this from the avenue of my mother-in-law’s house where she had given several youths refuge. “We thought the RUC were bad,” said one, “but…” as we watched the baton-charge.

In 1986, much to his surprise, he was bequeathed the beautiful Georgian Beauparc House, further along the banks of the Boyne, by his distant relative, the gloriously eccentric and heirless Sir Oliver Lambart. (Sir Oliver’s mother used to drive into the village to have her hair done and drive her elderly Jaguar so erratically that Bridie, the hairdresser, would say the rosary until Lady Lambart got home).

He and Iona moved in after some restoration was completed and lived there ever since. Were it not for Sir Oliver’s bequest, they would almost certainly have perished when the castle was engulfed by fire in 1991.

This was, he said, his lowest point. The restoration of the castle absorbed much of his energy and income in the subsequent years - indeed the outlay amounted to more than the value of the Beauparc bequest.

Business acumen is a rare quality in the aristocracy – spending has come much more easily to many noble families – and Henry’s seems to have come from his mother, Eileen’s. Her father was “Kong” Newsam, a New Zealander descended from the great English architect Sir Christoper Wren. He had arrived in Ireland just after World War I and married the widowed Eileen Bourke whose husband’s estate at Heathfield was confiscated by the Land Commission in the 1920s. They then moved to County Meath, where Eileen attended Preston School in Navan, and where her father established Navan Carpets.

Henry was one of the first to realise the scope for independent whiskey production and founded the Slane Castle distillery in 2013. Initially, it was to be a partnership with one of the leading Cognac houses but after the deal fell through the US drinks giant Brown-Forman stepped in to the joint venture. Although it is run by Henry’s son, Alex, Brown-Forman has been the sole owner since 2015 and the distillery, like most of the new ones in Ireland, has made an considerable losses.

When he first thought of entering politics in the early 1980s, Henry was initially attracted to Fianna Fáil as the party of business, like another Earl, Jeremy Altamont of Westport House (later 11th Marquess of Sligo). His mother was friendly with Charlie Haughey whom she first met when she was joint-master of the Meath Hunt.

However, his background did not appeal to certain elements in the party and he was rebuffed. He later joined Fine Gael and stood as their second candidate in Louth in the 1992 general election. He was later considered for a European seat but deferred to Mairéad McGuinness.

Henry’s marriage to Juliet, whose mother, Penelope, was a mistress of J. Paul Getty II, ended in divorce in 1985 and she moved back to England with their three children. Later that year he married Lady Iona Grimston, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Verulam, with whom he has one daughter, Lady Tamara Speers. He is succeeded as the 9^th Marquess Conyngham by his son, Alex.