24 August 2021

A reminder of a pilgrim visit
to Saint Bartholmew’s in
Farewell, on the saint’s day

Saint Bartholomew’s Church and tower in Farewell, near Lichfield … now a Grade II* listed building because of its mediaeval fabric and fittings (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Feast of Saint Bartholomew (24 August). As I reflect on this apostle and his feast day, my mind goes back to Saint Bartholomew’s Church in Farewell, just north of Lichfield, and one of my favourite walks in the English countryside, along Cross in Hand Lane, which starts at the back of the Hedgehog Vintage Inn.

As the vaccination programmes continue to be rolled out, and pandemic restrictions are lifted, I hope to back in Lichfield in October, and I have already booked myself into the Hedgehog Vintage Inn on the corner of Stafford Road and Cross in Hand Lane.

This walk along Cross in Hand Lane is one of my favourite walks in the area around Lichfield. It marks the beginning – or the end – of the pilgrim route between the shrine of Saint Chad in Lichfield and the shrine of Saint Werburgh in Chester Cathedral.

Today, this pilgrim route is marked out as the Two Saints’ Way. And little has changed in the landscape along this route since mediaeval times. The road twists and turns, rises and falls, with countryside that has changed little over the centuries.

At this time of the year, the fields are green and golden under the clear blue skies of summer. There are horses in paddocks here, or cows there, and most of the land is arable or being used for grazing.

Although farming patterns have changed in the last 30 or 40 years, these fields may not have changed in shape or altered in their use for centuries, and even the names on new-built houses can reflect names that date back to a period in the 12th to 14th century.

Apart from the occasional passing car or van, one other walker and two cyclists, the only hints of modernity are the overhead pylons, and until their demolition earlier this year the smoking towers of the power station in Rugeley could be glimpsed in the distance.

Often as priests, we think we should be filling the silent spaces in time with intense prayers and thoughts about sermons and services that need preparation. But sometimes we need to just let go and empty our minds, or thoughts – even our prayers. We take everything else to be recycled as we clear out spaces in our houses, our offices and our studies. But we seldom give time to clearing out the clutter in our inner spiritual spaces, allowing them to benefit from recycling.

Setting out on a morning walk along Cross in Hand Lane, on the edges of Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the past, this walk has offered me opportunities to clear out the cobwebbed corners of my brain and (hopefully) my soul, and allowed me time to enjoy this walk as this walk and as nothing more.

I have stopped to admire the shapes and patterns of the fields and the trees. I have stopped in silence at the babbling brook. I have stopped to look at Farewell Mill. The local historian Kate Gomez suggests the name has nothing to do with saying goodbye and points out that the alternative spelling of ‘Fairwell’ refers to a nearby ‘fair or clear spring.’

Eventually, at the top of Cross in Hand Lane, I have reached Farewell, about 2½ or three miles north-west of Lichfield.

I have stopped briefly to look at Farewell Hall, and wondered about its history, before making my way down the path to Saint Bartholomew’s Church.

The East End of the church in Farewell retains parts of the priory church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The story of this country parish church dates back to a small Benedictine nunnery founded there by Bishop Clinton of Lichfield ca 1140.

The Priory of Farewell was founded at Farewell by Roger de Clinton (1129-1148), Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (1129-1148), who endowed the place with several episcopal estates. Bishop Roger’s original grant gave to the church of Saint Mary at Farewell and the canons and lay brothers there the site of the church and important tracts of neighbouring land.

The Benedictine Priory was a stopping point on the pilgrim route between Lichfield Cathedral and Chester Cathedral that gives its name to Cross in Hand Lane.

Although it began as a foundation for monks or hermits, Farewell soon became a nunnery. Around 1140, the bishop made a new grant to the nuns of Farewell at the request of three hermits and brothers of Farewell, Roger, Geoffrey, and Robert, and with the consent of the chapter of Lichfield.

He gave the nuns the church of Saint Mary at Farewell, with a mill, a wood, pannage, the land between the stream of ‘Chistalea’ and ‘Blachesiche,’ and six serfs (coloni), formerly his tenants, with their lands and services. In addition, at the request of Hugh, his chaplain, and the canons of Lichfield, he granted the nuns large swathes of lands and woods in the area.

Bishop Roger’s charter was confirmed by his successor, Bishop Walter Durdent (1149-1159). Later, the nuns received a charter from Henry II, probably in 1155, along with lands in the forest at Lindhurst within the royal manor of Alrewas. The nuns were to hold their lands free of all secular service, and the charter was confirmed by King John in 1200.

By 1283, Farewell Priory had acquired a house in Lichfield but assigned the rent to the fabric fund of Lichfield Cathedral. Other priory lands were in Curborough, Chorley, Hammerwich, Abnalls, Ashmore Brook, Elmhurst, Longdon, and ‘Bourne,’ with farms at Farewell, Curborough, and Hammerwich, where the nuns were engaged in sheep-farming and arable farming by at least the 1370s.

Abnalls Farm … a name that dates back to priory lands in the 13th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But, as the nunnery prospered, all was not well in Farewell. Reports from 14th-century episcopal visitations found incidents of nuns who left the nunnery and put aside their habit, and nuns who were sleeping two in a bed and with young girls in their beds.

The bishops’ reports recommended that no secular women over the age of 12 were to live in the house unless they were going to become nuns, and only women of good fame and honest conversation were to be employed. Indeed, the door at the back of the garden leading to the fields was to be kept locked because of several scandals.

The nuns were forbidden to keep more than one child each for education in the priory, and no boy over seven years of age was allowed. The nuns were not to go into Lichfield without leave of the prioress, each nun had to be accompanied by two other nuns, and there was to be no ‘vain or wanton’ delay.

The priory did not survive the general Dissolution. When Cardinal Wolsey carried out a visitation of Lichfield Cathedral in 1526, he discussed the suppression of the priory with Bishop Blythe. In 1527, Richard Strete, Archdeacon of Salop, and Dr William Clayborough, a canon of York, were given a commission to dissolve the priory and to disperse the nuns.

The prioress and the other four nuns at Farewell were moved to other Benedictine nunneries, and their property was to go to the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield Cathedral for the support of the cathedral choristers.

In August 1527, the Chapter of Lichfield was granted all the possessions of Farewell Priory, including the house and church, which were assigned to the 12 choristers of Lichfield Cathedral.

Farewell Hall, on the brow of a hill above the church in Farewell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At the dissolution, the vast priory estates included the Manor of Farewell and property in Chorley, Curborough Somerville, Elmhurst, Lindhurst, Alrewas, Hammerwich, Ashmore Brook, Lichfield, King’s Bromley, Water Eaton (in Penkridge), Pipe, Abnalls, Cannock, Burntwood, Rugeley, Brereton, Handsacre, Oakley (in Croxall), Tipton and Longdon.

By the 18th century, the Parish Church of Saint Bartholomew seems to have been the only surviving part of the priory buildings. This church was rebuilt in brick in 1745, and the only mediaeval portion now surviving is the stone chancel at the east end. There was further restoration in 1848 when the church was re-roofed.

Saint Bartholomew’s Church is now a mixture of two different building styles and materials. The church is a Grade II* listed building for its surviving mediaeval fabric and fittings.

The square, plain topped west tower now serves as a vestry, with kitchen and storage space, but the bells are no longer used. The churchyard is well maintained and is bordered by brick walls and some hedging.

Farewell itself is small, and covers only 1,049 acres. A mile further on is the small village of Chorley, so the church in Farewell is not the focal point of village life. Today, Farewell and Chorley form a civil parish, but the parish council is a joint one with Curborough and Elmhurst, all within Lichfield District.

Farewell Manor … no longer part of the nuns’ vast estates (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty and everlasting God,
who gave to your apostle Bartholomew
grace truly to believe and to preach your word:
Grant that your Church may love that word which he believed
and may faithfully preach and receive the same;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Little has been altered in the landscape along this pilgrim route for centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Praying in Ordinary Time 2021:
87, Our Lady and the English Martyrs, Cambridge

Our Lady and the English Martyrs, standing on a strategic corner in Cambridge (Photograph, Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle. Before the day gets busy, I am taking a little time this morning for prayer, reflection and reading. Each morning in the time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

My theme this week is churches in Cambridge that are not college chapels. My photographs this morning (24 August 2021) are from the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs.

The church makes a strong dramatic statement of faith in a city with a strong Protestant tradition (Photograph, Patrick Comerford)

It is impossible not to notice the exuberantly massive Roman Catholic Church that stands guard on a prominent street corner on the way from the train station into the heart of Cambridge city centre.

This impressive – if not overpowering – castellated Gothic building is known locally as the Catholic church, or simply as ‘the Catholic,’ although local Cambridge Catholics often refer to it affectionately by its acronym, OLEM – Our Lady and the English Martyrs.

The first post-Reformation Roman Catholic church in Cambridge, Saint Andrew’s, was built by the architect of the Gothic revival, AWN Pugin, in 1842-1843, who also played an important role in the restoration, decoration and furnishing of the mediaeval fabric of the chapel of Jesus College between 1846 and 1849.

Eventually, Pugin’s church was dismantled, removed and rebuilt at Saint Ives, and replaced by OLEM, which was intended to make a strong, dramatic statement of faith in a city with a strong Protestant tradition. It was only in 1895 that the ban on Roman Catholics attending the university was lifted.

The new church cost a fortune, but it was all made possible by the wealth of Yolande Lyne-Stephens, a former ballerina at the Paris Opera and Drury Lane, who had married a very wealthy landowner.

Outside and inside, the church is a riot of detail and decoration: Gothic gargoyles, sleeping dogs, saints and angels, apostles and martyrs, all decorate and embellish the church in stone and in glass.

The best-known priest associated with the church, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914), who had studied classics and theology at Trinity College, Cambridge, between 1890 and 1893. He was a curate there in 1905-1908 and found it all ‘a little too gorgeous and complete.’

Benson was a son of Archbishop Edward White Benson of Canterbury, who had ordained him priest in 1895. But after some time with the Community of the Resurrection, he became a zealous convert to Rome in 1903, was ordained a priest a year later and was then sent to Cambridge. His impact on Cambridge undergraduates was so great that leading Cambridge Anglicans tried to put pressure on his family to make him leave.

Perhaps that is why EM Forster, in The Longest Journey, says the Catholic church ‘watches over the apostate city, taller by many a yard than anything within, and asserting, however wildly, that here is eternity, stability, and bubbles unbreakable upon a windless sea.’

Gothic gargoyles and sleeping dogs decorate the church fabric (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 22: 24-30 (NRSVA):

24 A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. 25 But he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. 26 But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. 27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

28 ‘You are those who have stood by me in my trials; 29 and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, 30 so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Benson found his church in Cambridge ‘a little too gorgeous and complete’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (24 August 2021, Saint Bartholomew the Apostle) invites us to pray:

Let us give thanks for the life and works of Saint Bartholomew. May we emulate his evangelism as we spread the Good News.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Cardinal John Fisher, canonised Chancellor of Cambridge … a figure at Our Lady and the English Martyrs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Penelope Smyth, the woman
from West Waterford who
became an Italian princess

The memorial to Princess Penelope in Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church, Youghal … she was born Penelope Caroline Smyth in Co Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

‘If only those walls could talk.’

As I was being guided around Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church, Youghal, Co Cork, early last week, I noticed a large number of plaques on the walls, including one that tells the story of Penelope Smyth who became Princess Penelope of Capua. She was born in Co Waterford, between Youghal and Lismore, and – had history taken a different twist or turn – she might have ended her days as Queen of Greece, or Queen of Belgium.

The memorial commemorating her in Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church reads:

‘In memoriam Her Royal Highness Penelope Caroline, Princess of Capua, daughter of Grice Smyth Esqr of Ballynatray, Co Waterford, born 19th July 1805, died 13th December 1882. The beloved wife & faithful widow of His Royal Highness Carlo Ferdinando Di Borbonne, Prince of Capua, who died 2nd April 1862.

‘This memorial devoted to a devoted and lamented mother is erected by her loving and beloved son & daughter, His Royal Highness Prince Francesco Carlo di Borbonne and Her Royal Highness Victoria Augusta Ludovica Isabella Amelia Philomina Helena Penelope di Borbonne Capua.

‘“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord” Rev. XIV 13.’

Princess Penelope was born in Co Waterford on 19 July 1805, while her husband, a member of the long-tailed Bourbon dynasty, was six years her junior. They met in the mid-1830s, romance was in the air, and on 5 April 1836 they eloped to Scotland and married at Gretna Green.

But their hasty marriage was not met with approval from the prince’s family. He had defied a royal decree that all royals required the king’s permission marry. In this case, the king was Carlo’s brother, King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, a kingdom based in Naples that included Sicily and much of southern Italy.

The couple began their honeymoon in exile. Then, in an unusual turn of events, the couple remarried a month later. But this second marriage did not meet the king’s approval either.

The couple remained in exile until his brother’s death. They had two children, Francesco and Vittoria, and remained devoted to each other until Carlo died on 2 April 1862. Their son Francesco died soon after.

Princess Penelope lived for another 20 years in a villa in Lucca, Italy, and died on 13 December 1882.

The family feud between the Smyths of Ballynatray and their royal relatives were said in Victorian society in Ireland to be ‘matters of much Neapolitan, not to say European, notoriety.’

Penelope Caroline Smyth was the second daughter of Grice and Mary Smyth of Ballynatray. She was born in 1815 and grew up on the banks of the Blackwater in Ballynatray.

The king refused to recognise the marriage because Penelope was not of royal blood. When the king refused to change his heart, the Italian prince and the Irish princess abandoned Naples and settled in Malta where they raised two children.

The title ‘Prince of Capua’ was traditionally given to the second sons of the Kings of the Two Sicilies.

Prince Francesco Carlo di Borbonne was born in Palermo on 10 November 1811. His father, Francesco I (1777-1830), was King of Naples; his mother was the Infanta of Spain. When their father died in 1830, Carlo’s elder brother, Ferdinand II (1810-1859), became King of the Two Sicilies (1810-1859). Between March and June 1829, the Neapolitan government put Carlo forward as a candidate for the Greek throne in 1829, and he was a candidate to become King of Belgium in 1831.

There were rumours that Penelope and Carlo had an earlier, private marriage at the Villa Reale di Marlia, near Lucca.

On 8 March 1836, her brother Richard Smyth received an irate letter from the manager of the Pantechnicon Carriage Makers in Belgrave Square, London, claiming Penelope had borrowed £45 in cash from them shortly before disappearing to Naples.

Later that month, Penelope wrote to Richard at Ballynatray, telling how she had been received in a ‘most cordial manner’ by Carlo’s sister Marie Christina, the Regent of Spain. ‘She embraced me several times and repeated that I should call her “Sister” and not “Majesty”!!’

Carlo and Penelope arrived at Gretna Green in Scotland and were married on 5 April 1836, perhaps not just once but twice. And, they were married on at least three further occasions – in Madrid, in Rome, by Cardinal Thomas Weld, a nephew-in-law from her first marriage of Mrs Fitzherbert, and, finally, in the fashionable Saint George’s Church in Hanover Square, London, on 8 May 1836.

The stories of multiple marriages echo the stories of the four marriages of her contemporary, Caroline Shirley (1818-1897), illegitimate daughter of Lord Tamworth, and Don Lorenzo Montani Sforza Cesarini (1807-1866), Duke of Segni, a year later, in 1837.

Penelope and her Prince abandoned Naples and went into exile in Malta. There they built a new palace, Selma Hall, and lived as exiles for the next 14 years. They were the parents of two children: Prince Francesco Ferdinando Carlo di Capua (1837-1918), Count di Mascali (1837-1918), and Princess Vittoria di Borbonne (1838-1895).

Negotiations in 1838 tried to secure the right of the Prince of Capua to return to Naples, with a promise from his brother that he could keep his titles, his wife would receive a title and the rights of the children would be respected. But the negotiations collapsed, and the Prince of Capua was described as a ‘pretender.’

Further negotiations took place in 1839, and again in 1841. It all these talks, it was suggested that Penelope would have the title of ‘Duchess of Villalta’ or Princess of Mascali’ But, once again, the talks collapsed.

The problem seemed to lie, in part, in the titles given to the Archduchess of Austria, wife of the king’s uncle, the Prince of Salerno, the King’s uncle, and the Princess of Sardinia, wife of the Count of Syracuse, the Prince of Capua’s younger brother. The Bourbon family fretted about being seen to insult the Courts of Vienna and Turin, but Penelope was unwilling to be a mere countess when she could be a princess.

Meanwhile, the Smyths of Ballynatray were worried that Penelope’s claims to any inheritance from Ballynatray that would sustain her lifestyle could be a drain on the family’s finances.

Prince Carlo of Bourbon-Naples, Prince of Capua, his wife Princess Penelope Smyth, Duchess of Mascali, and their daughter Vittoria, Countess of Mascali

Carlo and Penelope left Malta on 22 August 1850 and returned to Italy with their children Francesco and Vittoria. Prince Carlo died in Turin at the age of 50 on 22 April 1862, four months after the death of Penelope’s brother-in-law, Henry Wallis (1790-1862) of Drishane Castle, Millstreet, Co Cork, who had married Ellen Smyth in Saint Mary’s, Youghal, in 1825.

Ferdinand II died in 1859, his son succeeded as King Frances II, but the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies collapsed in 1860 during the Italian war of unification. Shortly after Carlo died in Turin in 1862, Victor Emmanuel II, king of the newly united Italy, formally recognised their marriage and granted Penelope the royal residence of Villa Reale de Marlia near Lucca in Tuscany.

The Duchess di Mascali, as she became, died at the Villa Reale de Marlia in 1882. The tablet erected to her memory is in north aisle of Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church, Youghal.

A plaque in Saint Mary’s recalls a descendant of Ellen Smyth of Ballynatray and Henry Wallis of Drishane Castle, Millstreet (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The Smyth family has lived in Co Waterford from Elizabethan times, and Ballynatray House, near Youghal, stands on the banks of the River Blackwater, Co Waterford, north of Youghal and south of Lismore.

Sir Richard Smyth of Ballynatray, Co Waterford, a High Sheriff of Co Waterford and became a brother-in-law of Richard Boyle, the 1st Earl of Cork, when he married Mary Boyle in the early 17th century. Smyth was a witness to Sir Walter Raleigh’s sale of lands in Co Cork and Co Waterford to Richard Boyle in 1602, and became a trustee of the new Boyle estates, along with Edmund Colthurst and Edmund Coppinger.

Sir Richard Smyth’s younger son, also Sir Richard Smyth, was a captain at the Battle of Kinsale, while his elder son, Sir Percy Smyth, was knighted in 1629, fought during the rebellion of 1641, and was military governor of Youghal in 1645. His second wife, Isabella Ussher, was a granddaughter of Archbishop Adam Loftus of Dublin.

Percy Smyth’s ‘castellated residence’ was largely destroyed in 1641, and his family later built a larger, Dutch-gabled house in the 1690s.

Percy Smyth’s sons included Boyle Smyth, MP for Tallow, Co Waterford; William Smyth, his heir; and Richard Smyth of Ballynatray.

Richard Smyth of Ballynatray married Alice, daughter and co-heir of Richard Grice of Ballycullane, Co Limerick, and their son, Grice Smyth was the ancestor of the Smyth family of Ballynatray.

Richard Smyth of Ballynatray and Alice Grice were the parents of Grice Smyth of Ballynatray, who married Gertrude Taylor of Burton, Co Cork. Grice Smyth died in 1724, and was succeeded at Ballynatray in turn by his son, Richard Smyth (1706-1768), and his son, also Richard Smyth.

When this Richard died, Ballynatray passed to his brother, Grice Smyth (1762-1816), who built Ballynatray in 1795. The large Palladian house designed by Alexander Dean of Cork incorporated the earlier house.

The house stands on a double bend of the River Blackwater that gives the impression of a large lake. Steep, oak-covered hills slope down on all sides of the house. Ballynatray is 11 bays long and five bays wide, with two storeys over a basement and a ballustraded parapet, originally decorated with elaborate urns. The façade facing the mouth of the River Blackwater has a pedimented breakfront, while the three central bays of the entrance front are deeply recessed and filled with a long, single-storey porch.

The interior was built for entertaining on the grandest scale, with a suite of interconnecting rooms, and some fine early 19th century plasterwork. The hall has a frieze of bull’s heads, the heraldic symbol of the Smyths, and the billiards room has an imaginative cornice of billiards balls and cues. The bedroom floor originally had a curious curvilinear corridor, but this has since been altered.

Grice Smith married Mary Broderick, daughter and co-heir of Henry Mitchell, of Mitchell’s Fort, Co Cork. Their children included Princess Penelope, and Ellen, who married Henry Wallis of Drishane Castle. He died in George’s Street, Limerick, on 18 January 1816, and he is commemorated by yet another memorial in Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church:

‘Sacred to the Memory of Grice Smyth Esquire of Ballinatre (sic) in the county of Waterford who having endured a most painful illness for ten years with perfect resignation to the will of God: departed this life in the City of Limerick; on the 18th Day of January Anno Domini 1816, and in the 51st year of his age.

‘His remains are deposited near this place in the same tomb with those of his ancestors, the Earls of Cork and Burlington.

‘As a brother, husband, parent and friend he was most affectionate, generous and sincere.

‘This monument is erected to his memory by his widow Mary Broderick Smyth, daughter of the late Henry Mitchell, Esquire, of Mitchells Fort, is testimony of her esteem and love.

‘As many as I love I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore and repent. Revelations, Chapter III verse xix.’

Penelope was a few months old when her father Grice died in Limerick in 1816. Ballynatray was then inherited by his eldest son, her eldest brother, Richard Smyth (1796-1858). Samuel Lewis describes the house in 1837 as ‘finely situated in a much improved demesne.’

Richard Smyth married the Hon Harriet St Leger, daughter of Hayes St Leger, 2nd Viscount Doneraile. They had no sons, and when Richard died in 1858, Ballynatray was inherited by their only surviving child, Charlotte Mary Smyth.

A memorial to a daughter of Charlotte Smyth and Charles Moore in Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church, Youghal (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Ten years earlier, in 1848, Charlotte Mary Smyth of Ballynatray had married the Hon Charles William Moore (1826-1898), who became 5th Earl Mount Cashell in 1889. The 1st Earl Mount Cashell, Stephen Moore (1730-1790), had been MP for Lismore, Co Waterford.

When Charlotte inherited Ballynatray, she and Charles assumed the additional name and arms of Smyth. Their first act on inheriting the Ballinatray estate was ‘to forgive every penny of arrears due by the tenants, amounting to several thousand pounds.’ They then had several farms revalued, and reduced many rents.

The former Grice estate of 1,673 acres near Kilmallock, Co Limerick, was advertised for sale in 1861. But Charles William Moore Smyth of Ballinatray owned over 7,000 acres in Co Waterford and 272 acres in Co Limerick in 1870s. He succeeded to the earldom in 1889, on the death of his elder brother, who had spent the previous 15 years in a lunatic asylum in Bristol.

Lord and Lady Mount Cashell were the parents of a son of a son and five daughters. Their only son, Richard Charles More Smyth (1859-1888), was killed at the age of 28 while playing polo in India. His infant son, Claude Stephen William Richard More Smyth (1887-1890), born just weeks earlier, became known as Lord Kilworth when his father succeeded to the earldom, but died just six weeks before his third birthday. Father and son are both remembered in plaques on the west wall, beside the plaque commemorating Princess Penelope on the north wall.

Lady Mount Cashell died in 1892, and her husband, who had changed his name legally to Charles William More in 18889, became engaged to Lady Cowan, the widow of Sir Edward Cowan (1840-1890), a whisky distiller, chairman of the Ulster Bank and former Mayor of Belfast. However, Lord Mount Cashell jilted her on their planned wedding day. It is said she was standing at the door of Saint Anne’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, when she received his letter telling her he could not marry her.

Then, a year later, in 1893, Lord Mount Cashell married Florence Cornelius, described dismissively as ‘a peasant girl’ from Queen’s County: he was 67 and she was 26.

When Charlotte died in 1892, once again there was no surviving son to inherit the estate, and Ballynatray and the Moore Park estate near Kilworth, Co Cork, passed to her eldest surviving daughter, Lady Harriette Gertrude Isabella Moore (1849-1904). She had married Colonel John Henry Graham Holroyd in 1872, and they changed their family name to Holroyd-Smyth.

Horace Holroyd-Smyth bequeathed Ballynatray in 1969 to his cousins, the Ponsonby family of Kilcooley Abbey, Co Tipperary, who sold the house to Serge and Henriette Boissevain in the late 1990s. They carried out a major restoration programme and Ballynatray later became the home of Henry Gwyn-Jones. The house and estate are now a wedding venue.

But the one wedding that never took place there was one of the many weddings of Princess Penelope, the woman from Waterford who might have been Queen of Greece or Queen of Belgium had history taken a different twist or turn.

Two memorials tell of two more tragic deaths in the Smyth and Smyth-Moore family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)