The Library at Castle Leslie ... the story of the Leslie family is a colourful story that spans all aspects of Irish life (Photograph: Kerry Stronger Byrne)
Patrick Comerford
I am staying for two nights at Castle Leslie, on the edges of the village of Glaslough in Co Monaghan. The colourful history of the Castle Leslie Estate is a story that is bedecked with politics, royalty and war, with a family that includes much-married bishops, exiled opponents of William of Orange, a woman said to be the granddaughter of George IV and his mistress, cousins of Winston Churchill, prisoners-of-war, and eccentrics who believe we are about to be invaded by flying saucers and UFOs.
The Leslie family has lived on the estate at Glaslough, since 1665, having bought the land with a £2,000 reward given to Bishop John Leslie by King Charles II, and for many generations this strong Church of Ireland family owned Lough Derg and the popular Roman Catholic pilgrimage destination known as Saint Patrick’s Purgatory. The Leslie family included warlike bishops, politicians, social reformers, agricultural innovators, philanthropic women, pre-Raphaelite painters, furniture collectors, writers and war heroes, and they all claimed to trace their ancestry back to Attila the Hun.
The first Leslie to come to Ireland was Bishop John Leslie who was Bishop of the Isles in Scotland. He moved to Ireland in June 1633 when he became Bishop of Raphoe, and he built Raphoe Castle in Co Donegal.
At the age of 67, Bishop Leslie married Catherine Cunningham, the teenage daughter of the Dean of Raphoe, and they had five children, two of whom lived to adulthood. Bishop Leslie was known as the “fighting bishop” and defeated Cromwell’s forces at the Battle of Raphoe. At the restoration of Charles II in 1660, the bishop, then aged 90, rode from Chester to London in 24 hours. As a reward for his loyalty, Charles II granted him £2,000. In 1665, Glaslough Castle and demesne was sold by Sir Thomas Ridgeway to John Leslie, by then Bishop of Clogher.
When John Leslie died at the age of 100 in 1671, he was reputed to be the oldest bishop in the world. His death marked the end of the links that bridged the Jacobite or even the Elizabethan Church with the Church of the Caroline restoration.
His son John, who was then aged 26 and inherited the estate, was Dean of Dromore. He never married, and his brother, Canon Charles Leslie, who succeeded him at the age of 71, only enjoyed the estate for a few short months and died the following year.
Canon Charles Leslie (1650-1722) was a leading theologian among the Nonjurors. Oliver Goldsmith said he was an arguer of some wit; Dr Samuel Johnson said “he was a reasoner not to be reasoned with.”
As a Nonjuror, Charles Leslie opposed the accession of William III after the defeat of James II at the Boyne. He was Chancellor of Connor Cathedral before fleeing to France, where he was a member of the Jacobite court. At the end of his days, George I pardoned him, saying: “Let the old man go home to Glaslough to die.”
Charles Leslie had three children – Robert, Henry and “Vinegar” Jane. Henry and Robert were friends of Dean Swift, who was a regular visitor to Castle Leslie. Swift wrote many verses about the Leslies, not all of them complimentary:
Robin to a beggar with curse
Will throw the last shilling in his purse
But when the coachman comes for pay
That rogue must wait another day.
Or:
With rows and rows of books upon the shelves
Written by the Leslies
All about themselves.
Inside Castle Leslie (Photograph: Sarah O’Loughlin)
Charles Powell Leslie I, who inherited the estate in 1743, improved farming methods in the district, was MP for Hillsborough (1771) and Monaghan (1776), and in 1779 became active in the Volunteer Movement as colonel of the Trough Volunteers. In 1783, Grattan’s Parliament was established thanks to pressure from 80,000 Volunteers. In his election speech that year, Charles Leslie declared: “'I desire a more equal representation of the people and a tax upon our Absentee Landlords.”
Charles Powell Leslie’s brother-in-law, Lord Mornington, was the father of the Duke of Wellington. But Charles died before Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. He was one of the few landlords to refuse Castlereagh’s offer of a peerage in return for voting for the Act of Union. He died in August 1800.
His younger sons included John Leslie (1772-1854), Bishop of Dromore and later Kilmore, Elphon and Ardagh, and Canon Edward Leslie (1792-1865), Treasurer of Dromore Cathedral. But the estate passed to the eldest son, Charles II Powell Leslie, a keen amateur architect who designed many the present farm buildings at Castle Leslie and the fairy tale gate lodge that looks down the lake to the castle.
Charles Powell Leslie III (1821-1871) loved big house parties and wanted to entertain on a grand scale. His taste in architecture has been described as an eclectic mix of “Free-Range Gothic,” “Early Taj Mahal,” “Late Rothschild,” “Bahnhof Baroque” and “Jacobean Bloody,” Some of his plans for Glaslough included a cut-price copy of the Chateau de Chambord in Framce, that would have been six times larger than the present Castle Leslie, and a nine-storey gothic tower in the middle of the lake, reached by Venetian gondolas.
The Lake at Castle Leslie (Photo: Castle Leslie Estate)
This Charles Powell Leslie completed a number of successful building projects, including the grain merchant store in Glaslough and the entrance lodges at the main gates to the castle. Sadly for Charles – but fortunately for the Leslie family finances – he choked on a fish bone before he could realise any of his major architectural fantasies. He died unmarried in 1871 and the castle building project was left to his brother, Sir John Leslie (1822-1916), the first baronet and a painter of the Pre-Raphaelite school.
Sir John Leslie built Castle Leslie at the insistence of his young wife Constance. Lady Constance Damer was the daughter of Mary Georgiana Emma (‘Minnie’) Seymour (1798-1848), who was allegedly a daughter of George IV and his mistress, Mrs Maria Fitzherbert.
In 1910, the Leslies moved to Manchester Square in London, where he died in 1916. Soon afterwards, the family finances took a nosedive when the Leslies invested their compensation money from the Wyndham Land Acts in Russian Railway Bonds. They were advised by Queen Mary’s financial adviser, Sir Ernest Cassell, and bought the bonds in 1917, immediately before the Russian Revolution.
The title passed to their only son, Sir John Leslie, 2nd Baronet. In 1884, he had married Leonie Jerome, a younger sister of Jenny Jerome, who married Lord Randolph Churchill – the parents of Sir Winston Churchill. The Churchills considered the Leslies their poor relations, and there are many Churchill “hand-me-downs” in Castle Leslie. Leonie died in 1943, and Sir John died in 1944.
Sir Shane Leslie (1885-1971), 3rd Baronet, was an author, poet and nationalist. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and while he was at King’s College he became a Roman Catholic and a supporter of Home Rule. He stood as a Nationalist candidate in Derry in 1910, losing by a mere 59 votes to the Duke of Abercorn.
He resisted family pressures to send his own sons to Eton, and instead sent them to English Benedictine schools – Jack to Downside and Desmond to Ampleforth. He Shane handed over Saint Patrick’s Purgatory on Lough Derg – which had been in the hands of the Leslie family for generations – to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher, and transferred Castle Leslie to his eldest son, John Norman Leslie who later became the fourth baronet as Sir Jack Leslie.
Sir Jack was educated at Downside and Magdalene College, Cambridge. During World War II, he was a prisoner of war for five years, which brought about his ill-health. He transferred the estate to his sister Anita, and for the next 40 years lived in Rome until he returned home to Castle Leslie in 1994.
Anita Leslie-King, in turn, transferred Castle Leslie and Glaslough to her younger brother, Desmond Leslie. He was a war-time Spitfire pilots, an author and a composer of electronic music, as well as having an unusual interest in UFOs and flying saucers. In 1991, he handed the estate over to his five children and Castle Leslie is now run by his daughter, Samantha Leslie.
When Sammy Leslie took over the estate from her father, she recognised it as a commercially viable opportunity that would not only ensure the future safe-keeping of the estate and its history but also prompt its regeneration. And so Castle Leslie has been transformed into the country house hotel where I am enjoying two days of isolated luxury.
29 August 2011
Staying at Castle Leslie
Castle Leslie, in Glaslough, Co Monagahan
Patrick Comerford
I’m staying for two nights at Castle Leslie in Co Monaghan. I checked in earlier this afternoon, before going on to Shankill Parish Church, Lurgan, for the ordination of four new deacons (the Revd Caroline Mansley, the Revd Emma Rutherford , the Revd Matthew Milliken and the Revd Colin McConaghie) for the Diocese of Dromore, and then returned to Castle Leslie, in the village of Glaslough.
Castle Leslie is a country house hotel exuding old-world grandeur and hospitality, and grandeur and is free from distractions and intrusions. The 1,000-acre Castle Leslie Estate includes the charming and eccentric Castle Leslie with its own equestrian centre and hunting lodge set in unspoiled countryside, with ancient forests, rolling hills, green fields, lakes and streams – and I’m told it also has one of the best pike fishing lakes in Ireland.
Once you enter the grounds of the estate, there is an immediate sense of freedom and privacy. Castle Leslie tries to envelop its visitors in an aura of times past, with no telephones, televisions or radios, there is no Wi-Fi or mini-bars in the bedrooms, and there is no pressure to do anything except relax.
There are several elegant rooms with the promise of seclusion and privacy, the promise of mouth-watering food, friendly service, boating on the lake, breakfast until noon, picnic lunches, and dinner by candlelight in the dining room or gallery, with the romantic alternative of dining privately in the hand-painted Blue Room. There is a private cinema, a full-size snooker table, a magnificent drawing room with a grand piano and a De La Robbia fireplace,
The Drawing Room in Castle Leslie
Castle Leslie stands on the site of an earlier castle, and was designed in 1870 by Charles Lanyon and WH Lynn for Sir John Leslie in the Scottish baronial style.
At the time, the house presented a rather dour and austere facade. But the garden front has an Italianate renaissance cloister that links the main house to a single-storey wing where you find the library and the billiard room. And, in contrast to Lynn’s exterior, the interior shows the hands of Lanyon and Leslie himself, with a strong Italian renaissance feeling.
Since Sammy Leslie took over at Castle Leslie, she has worked hard to realise her ambition to bring the estate back to life. But she also wanted to have fun – restoring Castle Leslie with style and elegance. She started small by opening tea rooms in the old conservatory to give her the income to restore the roof. From 1995 to 1997, she refurbished 14 of the castle bedrooms and bathrooms, each in its own unique style.
Castle Leslie was soon awarded “the Good Hotel Guide Caesar Award” for being “utterly enjoyable and mildly eccentric.”
With the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, the Leslie family went on to restore the rest of the estate to its former glory.
In June 2002, Castle Leslie attracted international attention when Glaslough hosted the wedding of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. It is said over 800 million people watched the wedding on television worldwide.
In 2004, after 20 years in external ownership, the estate’s equestrian centre and hunting lodge were bought back by the Leslie family.
Meanwhile, the Long Gallery Wing in the castle was redeveloped, allowing Castle Leslie to offer business and corporate facilities. Six further guestrooms brought the room total to 20, and the old Victorian kitchens were turned into a cookery school, adding another dimension to the estate.
With 78,000 sq ft of historic buildings, miles of famine wall and the hunting lodge back in the family fold, further funding was found. Inspired by Poundbury, the town built by Prince Charles, Sammy Leslie brought in conservation and heritage specialists to restore the village of Glaslough, building village cottages and houses around a village square and green.
In 2005, the Castle Leslie Estate won the Sunday Times ‘Best Country House’ and Food and Wine’s ‘Best Country House Restaurant in Ulster’ awards. In the following year further recognition came with the Hotel and Catering Review Gold Medal Award for Best Country House.
In January 2006, work started on a €10million refurbishment, including the 35-bedroom lodge and the new state-of-the-art equestrian centre. The project was supported by grants from the Irish Government and the EU under the National Development Plan, and the refurbished and renovated hunting lodge and the equestrian centre at the castle gates reopened in May 2007.
All this work has allowed Sammy to go back again to her original dream – great horses, good food and old-style hospitality. But she has already identified a number of future projects including the restoration of the Walled Garden and the Gate Lodge.
Meanwhile, I’m off to dinner.
Patrick Comerford
I’m staying for two nights at Castle Leslie in Co Monaghan. I checked in earlier this afternoon, before going on to Shankill Parish Church, Lurgan, for the ordination of four new deacons (the Revd Caroline Mansley, the Revd Emma Rutherford , the Revd Matthew Milliken and the Revd Colin McConaghie) for the Diocese of Dromore, and then returned to Castle Leslie, in the village of Glaslough.
Castle Leslie is a country house hotel exuding old-world grandeur and hospitality, and grandeur and is free from distractions and intrusions. The 1,000-acre Castle Leslie Estate includes the charming and eccentric Castle Leslie with its own equestrian centre and hunting lodge set in unspoiled countryside, with ancient forests, rolling hills, green fields, lakes and streams – and I’m told it also has one of the best pike fishing lakes in Ireland.
Once you enter the grounds of the estate, there is an immediate sense of freedom and privacy. Castle Leslie tries to envelop its visitors in an aura of times past, with no telephones, televisions or radios, there is no Wi-Fi or mini-bars in the bedrooms, and there is no pressure to do anything except relax.
There are several elegant rooms with the promise of seclusion and privacy, the promise of mouth-watering food, friendly service, boating on the lake, breakfast until noon, picnic lunches, and dinner by candlelight in the dining room or gallery, with the romantic alternative of dining privately in the hand-painted Blue Room. There is a private cinema, a full-size snooker table, a magnificent drawing room with a grand piano and a De La Robbia fireplace,
The Drawing Room in Castle Leslie
Castle Leslie stands on the site of an earlier castle, and was designed in 1870 by Charles Lanyon and WH Lynn for Sir John Leslie in the Scottish baronial style.
At the time, the house presented a rather dour and austere facade. But the garden front has an Italianate renaissance cloister that links the main house to a single-storey wing where you find the library and the billiard room. And, in contrast to Lynn’s exterior, the interior shows the hands of Lanyon and Leslie himself, with a strong Italian renaissance feeling.
Since Sammy Leslie took over at Castle Leslie, she has worked hard to realise her ambition to bring the estate back to life. But she also wanted to have fun – restoring Castle Leslie with style and elegance. She started small by opening tea rooms in the old conservatory to give her the income to restore the roof. From 1995 to 1997, she refurbished 14 of the castle bedrooms and bathrooms, each in its own unique style.
Castle Leslie was soon awarded “the Good Hotel Guide Caesar Award” for being “utterly enjoyable and mildly eccentric.”
With the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, the Leslie family went on to restore the rest of the estate to its former glory.
In June 2002, Castle Leslie attracted international attention when Glaslough hosted the wedding of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. It is said over 800 million people watched the wedding on television worldwide.
In 2004, after 20 years in external ownership, the estate’s equestrian centre and hunting lodge were bought back by the Leslie family.
Meanwhile, the Long Gallery Wing in the castle was redeveloped, allowing Castle Leslie to offer business and corporate facilities. Six further guestrooms brought the room total to 20, and the old Victorian kitchens were turned into a cookery school, adding another dimension to the estate.
With 78,000 sq ft of historic buildings, miles of famine wall and the hunting lodge back in the family fold, further funding was found. Inspired by Poundbury, the town built by Prince Charles, Sammy Leslie brought in conservation and heritage specialists to restore the village of Glaslough, building village cottages and houses around a village square and green.
In 2005, the Castle Leslie Estate won the Sunday Times ‘Best Country House’ and Food and Wine’s ‘Best Country House Restaurant in Ulster’ awards. In the following year further recognition came with the Hotel and Catering Review Gold Medal Award for Best Country House.
In January 2006, work started on a €10million refurbishment, including the 35-bedroom lodge and the new state-of-the-art equestrian centre. The project was supported by grants from the Irish Government and the EU under the National Development Plan, and the refurbished and renovated hunting lodge and the equestrian centre at the castle gates reopened in May 2007.
All this work has allowed Sammy to go back again to her original dream – great horses, good food and old-style hospitality. But she has already identified a number of future projects including the restoration of the Walled Garden and the Gate Lodge.
Meanwhile, I’m off to dinner.
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