How the Marquis of Bath came to own Comberford Hall for almost 30 years

Comberford Hall, seen from the train between Tamworth and Lichfield … owned for almost 30 years by the Thynne family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

When two of us were visiting Tamworth and Lichfield earlier this month, including former homes of the Comberford family in the area, I was reminded of the interesting links between Comberford and the Thynne family.

The Thynne family owned Comberford Hall for almost 30 years (1761-1789), but the family’s connections with the Lichfield and Tamworth area begin with Thomas Thynne (1640-1714), 1st Viscount Weymouth, and his marriage in 1671 to Lady Frances Finch, a granddaughter of the Dowager Duchess of Somerset, a close friend of William Comberford of Comberford Hall, and who also held properties in Comberford, Wigginton and Tamworth.

Thomas Thynne was a descendant of Sir John Thynne (1515-1580), who bought Longleat, a former Augustinian priory, after the dissolution of the monastic houses. Thynne owed his political success and social advancement to the patronage of Edward Seymour (1500-1552), Duke of Somerset and uncle of King Edward VI, and who later provided interesting family connections through intermarriage between their descendants.

After studying at Christ Church, Oxford, Thomas Thynne entered public life as the English envoy to Sweden (1666-1669). After his return to England, Thynne married Lady Frances Finch, daughter of Heneage Finch, 3rd Earl of Winchilsea. Through this marriage in 1671, Thynne inherited large estates and political interests in the Tamworth area, including Draycott Bassett, and extensive Irish estates in Co Monaghan.

Lady Frances Finch’s mother, Lady Mary Seymour (1637-1673), was a daughter of William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset and Lady Frances Devereux (1599-1674) – and there lies another connection with the Comberford family. In 1616, Lady Frances Devereux married William Seymour (1587-1660), later Duke of Somerset. As the Dowager Duchess of Somerset, she also held properties in Comberford, Wigginton and Tamworth.

When she died on 24 April 1674, she left her collection of 1,000 books to Lichfield Cathedral, including the Saint Chad’s Gospels and a book of pedigrees given to her by her close friend, Colonel William Comberford of Comberford Hall.

William Comberford had been the Royalist High Sheriff of Staffordshire and took an active role in the siege of Lichfield. When he died in 1656, he left a book of pedigrees of the Nevilles, Earls of Warwick to his friend, Frances, Marchioness of Hertford, later the Duchess of Somerset, saying: ‘The book of pedigrees of the Earles of Warwick, I give and devise to the Right Honorable and trulie virtuous ladie, the Marchioness of Hertford, for whose sake … I bought the same.’

His affectionate words and the terms of the bequest reveal a close and intimate friendship with the woman who restored the Lichfield Gospels to Lichfield Cathedral. Her donation of books to the cathedral also included this book William Comberford had bought for her.

After her death in 1674, Thynne inherited more estates through a division of land that came out of an agreement between the heirs of the two daughters of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Earl Ferrers, who lived at Tamworth Castle, inherited the share of his grandmother, Lady Dorothy Devereux, while Thomas Thynne succeeded to the inheritance of Lady Frances Devereux, the earl’s elder daughter, later Marchioness of Hertford and Duchess of Somerset. This division was uneven, and in Lord Weymouth’s favour, but Lord Weymouth behaved generously to rectify this injustice to Ferrers.

Lady Frances Devereux ... the ‘trulie virtuous ladie’ named in the will of William Comberford, and ancestor of the Thynne family who bought Comberford Hall

Before he inherited Longleat, Thomas Thynne lived at Draycott Bassett near Tamworth, Lichfield and Sutton Coldfield. He was a royalist during the English Civil War. He was MP for Oxford University (1674-1679), but he was judged to stand little chance of re-election for the university. But his marriage had brought him a strong interest political in Lichfield and Tamworth, and he was elected for Tamworth to the Exclusion Parliaments (1679-1681).

He was also High Steward of Sutton Coldfield from 1679, High Steward of Tamworth from 1681, and High Steward of Lichfield from 1712, holding all three offices until he died in 1714, and he was a Justice of the Peace for Staffordshire (1680-1696).

In the 1681 election, he was involved in an unresolved double return at Tamworth, and never sat for Oxford. Instead, John Swinfen (1613-1694) of Swinfen Hall, near Freeford, a former parliamentarian, regained the seat in Tamworth. Swinfen’s descendant, Samuel Swinfen of Swinfen Hall, would later sell Comberford Hall to the Thynne family in 1761.

Thynne, who had succeeded his father as a baronet in 1680, entered the House of Lords a year after losing the Tamworth seat with the titles of Viscount Weymouth and Baron Thynne of Warminster (1682). A special provision allowed the titles to pass to the male heirs of his two brothers.

As Lord Weymouth, he was one of the four peers sent in late 1688 to ask William of Orange to summon a free Parliament. Although he took the oaths to the new regime, he protected non-jurors, ‘who cried him up for a very religious man, which pleased him extremely.’

When Thomas Ken, the saintly Bishop of Bath and Wells, was deprived of his see as a non-juror, Lord Weymouth, a friend since their days in Oxford, brought him to at Longleat and provided him with an annuity of £80. For 20 years, Ken lived on the top floor at Longleat and part of the West Wing was transformed into a chapel for daily worship.

Ken exerted a profound influence on his host, becoming what some describe as his conscience. Lord Weymouth acquired a reputation for good deeds inspired by the devout bishop. Thynne was a founding member of the Anglican mission agency the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG, now USPG, United Society Partners in the Gospel), and together Thynne and Ken founded the Lord Weymouth School, now Warminster School, in 1707.

While living in Longleat, Bishop Ken wrote many of his famous hymns, including ‘Awake my soul.’ When he died in 1711, he bequeathed his extensive library to Lord Weymouth.

As a Tory and a Jacobite suspect under William III, Lord Weymouth was excluded from political office until the reign of Queen Anne. His government offices included First Lord of Trade (1702-1707), and his royal appointments included Warden of the Forest of Dean (1712).

Thynne and his wife Lady Frances Finch were parents of four sons, including son Henry Thynne (1675-1708), who was MP Tamworth in 1701-1702 with Thomas Guy. However, none of the children outlived their parents. Family lore says Weymouth was twice offered an earldom, but declined the honours because he had no immediate male heir.

When he died in 1714, there was no immediate male heir, and his titles and estates passed to his great nephew, Thomas Thynne, 2nd Viscount Weymouth (1710-1751).

Thomas Thynne’s father died a month before Thomas was born, and at the age of four, on the death of his great uncle Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth, in 1714, he inherited the family titles and estates.

This Thomas Thynne maintained the family links with Tamworth, and in 1733 he became High Steward of Tamworth. His other offices included Keeper of Hyde Park, Keeper of the Mall, and Ranger of Saint James’s Park (1739-1751).

When his second wife, Lady Louisa Carteret, died in childbirth in her early 20s, her friend Mrs Delany wrote: ‘Her husband’s ... loss is irreparable.’ During her illness, Mrs Delany had written that ‘my Lord Weymouth is like a madman.’

Thomas Thynne (1734-1796), 1st Marquess of Bath, owned Comberford Hall from 1761 to 1789

When Lord Weymouth died in January 1751, he was succeeded in his titles and his vast estates by his elder son, Thomas Thynne (1734-1796), who became 3rd Viscount Weymouth and was given the additional title of Marquess of Bath in 1789. This Thomas Thynne bought Comberford Hall and the Comberford estate from Samuel Swinfen in 1761, and continued to hold them for almost 30 years.

Some local historians say Comberford Hall was rebuilt in the 1790s, after it was owned by Lord Bath, although Mrs Valerie Coltman, whose family lived there until the late 1950s, believes Comberford Hall was rebuilt at a much earlier date in 1720.

This Thomas Thynne held a number of political offices during the reign of King George III. He was Southern Secretary and Northern Secretary, during the American War of Independence. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for a brief time in 1765, although he never visited Ireland. He is possibly best known for his role in the Falklands Crisis, a dispute with Spain in 1770 over the possession of the Falkland Islands.

Later, he was High Steward of Sutton Coldfield (1781-1796). But he was often accused of idleness and regular drunkenness, which depleted his great fortune, and it was said ‘his house was often full of bailiffs.’

On 1 August 1789, Lord Weymouth – who was about to become the 1st Marquis of Bath – and his son, the Hon Thomas Thynne, sold the Manors of Comberford and Wigginton, including lands in Hopwas and Coton, to Arthur Chichester (1739-1799), 5th Earl of Donegall.

Perhaps the sale of Comberford Hall provided much of the funds the Thynne family needed to meet the costs of recovering the Bath title. Within three weeks of the sale of Comberford, Lord Weymouth was given the additional title of Marquis of Bath on 18 August 1789. By then, his only public office was High Steward of Sutton Coldfield.

Lord Bath died in London on 19 November 1796 at the age of 62. He and his wife Lady Elizabeth Bentinck were the parents of three sons and four daughters, including Thomas Thynne (1765-1837), who succeeded as 2nd Marquess of Bath.

Earlier, Sir Robert Peel (1750-1830) was elected MP for Tamworth in 1790, having bought the borough along with many of Lord Bath’s estate in the area, including Drayton Bassett. Peel was the father of the later Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), and the Thynne family’s links with Comberford and with the Tamworth and Lichfield area had come to an end.


There was one later, though distant, connection between the Thynne family and Comberford Hall over a century later. Henry Allsopp (1811-1887), 1st Lord Hindlip, married Elizabeth Tongue in 1839. She was the second daughter and eventual heiress of William Tongue of Comberford Hall. Their grandson, Charles Allsopp (1877-1931), 3rd Lord Hindlip, married in 1904, Agatha Lillian Thynne, a great-granddaughter of the 2nd Marquess of Bath, who had sold Comberford Hall with his father.

The Town Hall and the statue of Sir Robert Peel on Market Street, Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

John Leslie, ‘the oldest bishop in Christendom’, and his eighteen-year-old wife

Castle Leslie … the home built by Bishop John Leslie at Glaslough, Co Monaghan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

When Bishop John Leslie died on 8 September 1671, he was just a few weeks short of his 100th birthday and was reputed to be the oldest bishop in Christendom. He was also a pugnacious bishop, and was known as ‘the fighting bishop’ because of his active role, despite his years, in the wars that raged throughout Ireland in the 1630s, 1640s and 1650s.

Bishop Leslie must have been a very happy man though. When he died, his wife Catherine was half his age, and in their 33 years of marriage they had ten children in all. John Leslie may have thought he was at the end of his career when he came to County Donegal in June 1633 as Bishop of Raphoe. He was then almost 62, single, and was moving from Scotland where he had a difficult time as Bishop of the Isles, a far-flung diocese. But Ireland brought its rewards in church, politics and in marriage.

Leslie was born at Crichie in Aberdeenshire on 14 October 1571. He was educated at Aberdeen, but left Scotland in 1588 and studied in Padua, Leipzig, Madrid, Salamanca and San Sebastian. He continued to live on Continental Europe for decades, and in Spain he was acclaimed for his learning in Latin.

He was in his late 40s when he moved to England, and he was admitted to read in the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1618. He was ordained deacon that year by John King, Bishop of London, and at the age of 50 was ordained priest in 1621. On the nomination of King James I, In 1624, he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity (DD) at Trinity College Cambridge in 1624 and was also made a Privy Councillor of Scotland and one of his royal chaplains. That year, Leslie also received his first church appointment, as Rector of Hartlebury in Worcestershire. But he remained there for only three months and returned to London as Rector of Saint Martin Vintry on Saint Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1625, ten days before the king died.

Leslie was now dabbling in politics and war, and he was with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, at the Siege of Isle de Ré in 1627 in support of the Huguenots fighting against the French crown. The siege was a disaster, but Leslie continued to enjoy royal favour, and he returned to Scotland at the age of 56 when King Charles I appointed him Bishop of the Isles in August 1628. In Scotland, neither episcopacy nor a far-flung diocese along the western coast had their attractions, with strong Presbyterian resistance to Charles I’s efforts to impose a brand of Anglicanism on the Church of Scotland. When Charles I was finally crowned in Edinburgh in June 1633, he rewarded Leslie’s loyalty with a new appointment as Bishop of Raphoe in Co Donegal, and he had Raphoe Castle built.

By then, Leslie was almost 62, but Ireland offered a fresh start, in life and in love. Leslie found many of the diocesan estates had been acquired illegally by lay people, and he used the force of law to recover some of these lands. He had no official residence, and so he built a new, fortified episcopal palace. In his disputes, he found a ready ally in John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry and later the Restoration Archbishop of Armagh. Then, in 1638, the bishop married Catherine Cunningham, daughter of Alexander Cunningham, Dean of Raphoe Cathedral. There was almost a gap of half a century in their ages – he was almost 67, she was only eighteen.

When the rebellion of 1641 broke out, Leslie went to battle for Charles I. Although he was now 70, he raised a company of soldiers, brought ammunition from Dublin to Derry, and relieved a besieged Sir Ralph Gore at Magherabeg, in north-west Donegal.

When most of his fellow bishops of the Church of Ireland abandoned their dioceses and moved to England or Scotland, Leslie remained in Raphoe and did not go to Scotland until 1642. After the execution of Charles I in 1649, he returned again to County Donegal and defended Raphoe against the Cromwellians. He was one of the last royalists to submit in 1653, and was the only Anglican bishop to remain in his diocese in Ireland during the Cromwellian era. During those years, he confirmed children in Dublin, and ordained priests and deacons.

At the Restoration in 1660, Leslie – by now an elderly but sprightly man of 88 – rode from Chester to London in just 24 hours to declare his loyalty to Charles II. He then returned to Ireland and resumed his role as Bishop of Raphoe. A year later, with Bramhall’s reorganisation of the Church of Ireland, Leslie’s loyalty was recognised once more and at almost the age of 90, he was appointed Bishop of Clogher in June 1661. On the recommendation of Charles II, the Irish Parliament voted to him a reward of £2,000. Leslie said he hoped ‘that whatever the house hath given to a prophet may receive a prophet’s reward.’

Leslie used the money to buy Glaslough estate in County Monaghan and renamed the house Castle Leslie. Despite his age, he remained Bishop of Clogher for another decade. When he died on 8 September 1671, he was buried at Saint Saviour’s, the church he had built on his estate.

Catherine and John Leslie seem to have been happily married, and they had ten children. Their eldest surviving son, John Leslie, became Dean of Dromore, while their sixth son, the theologian Charles Leslie (1650-1720), Chancellor of Connor Cathedral, was a leading non-juror, refusing to take the oath of loyalty to William III and following the Jacobite court into exile.

The descendants of this happy marriage continue to live at Castle Leslie in Glaslough – which is, appropriately, a popular wedding venue today. The Castle Leslie estate has recently launched a new gin in honour of Bishop John Leslie; named ‘The Fighting Bishop’, it is produced from beech leaves and botanicals hand-picked from trees planted by the bishop on the estate over 300 years ago.

This paper was first published as Chapter 15, John Leslie, ‘the oldest bishop in Christendom’, and his eighteen-year-old wife, in Marriage and the Irish: A miscellany, edited by Salvador Ryan (Wordwell: Dublin, 2019, 283 pp), pp 50-52.

Why Dr Johnson found Charles Leslie was ‘a reasoner not to be reasoned with’

Castle Leslie, home of Sir Jack Leslie and his Nonjuring ancestor, Charles Leslie, who was admired by Samuel Johnson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The death of Sir Jack Leslie earlier this week at the age of 99 brought back happy memories of my visits to Castle Leslie in Glaslough, Co Monaghan.

Sir Jack was known everyone who visited Castle Leslie as “Uncle Jack.” Many of the reports and obituaries are discussing his close kinship to Sir Winston Churchill. But I was also reminded this week of his descent from Canon Charles Leslie (1650-1722), who succeeded to the Glaslough estates at the age of 71 but only enjoyed them for a few short months before he died.

Charles Leslie 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 in 1690. He was Chancellor of Connor Cathedral before fleeing to France, where he was a member of the Jacobite court in exile.

In a particularly heated conversation in 1775, Johnson referred to William III as “one of the most worthless scoundrels that ever existed.” He appears determined to disparage William at every opportunity, castigated his rude table manners, accused him of being overbearing towards his immediate family, and despising his narrow militarism.

Johnson was angered by what he saw as the degradation of the Anglican Church that began to set in under the Whig ‘Junto’ that grabbed power under William and so agreed with those who those High Church figures during the reign of Queen who warned about the “Church in Danger.”

His admiration for High Church leaders such as Charles Leslie leads scholars to ask whether Johnson was a closet Jacobite. Remarkably, Johnson’s Dictionary contains no definition of the word ‘Jacobite’ and he defines Nonjuror as “One who conceiving James II unjustly deposed, refuses to swear allegiance to those who have succeeded him.”

Charles Leslie … a Nonjuror allowed to return home in old age

Charles Leslie was a Jacobite and Nonjuror. He was born in Dublin in July 1650s, the son of John Leslie (1571-1671), Bishop of Raphoe and later Bishop of Clogher. He was educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, and Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in 1680, and in 1687 he became Chancellor of Connor, where Jeremy Taylor had been bishop.

Leslie was a firm supporter of the Stuart dynasty, and, having refused to take the new oath of loyalty to William and Mary, he was deprived of his offices in the Church of Ireland. For about 20 years, he lived in England, where he spent his time writing pamphlets in favour of the Nonjuring cause, and against Quakers, Jews, Socinians, Roman Catholics and Deists. He was zealous in his attacks on heretics, his defence of the sacraments, and in his support of the Jacobite cause.

When a warrant was issued for his arrest in 1710 for his pamphlet The Good Old Cause, or Lying in Truth, he left England for France, and joined the Jacobite court in exile in 1711.

After the failure of the Stuart cause in 1715, Leslie accompanied his patron into Italy, where he remained until 1721.

Samuel Johnson later praised Leslie as the only Nonjuror who could reason, saying: “Leslie was a reasoner and a reasoned who was not to be reasoned against.” The sale catalogue of his library shows Johnson owned a copy of Charles Leslie’s two-volume Theological Works, published in 1721.

However, Johnson disagreed with Leslie on many points, Including the duty of passive obedience and the divine right of kings.

Johnson filled his Dictionary with citations from High Church figures during Queen Anne’s reign. In all, he cites four Nonjurors in his Dictionary: John Kettlewell (1653-1695), Vicar of Coleshill, near Tamworth, Robert Nelson (1656-1715), William Law (1686-1761) and Charles Leslie. Johnson knew and admired the work of other leading Nonjurors, including the Nonjuring bishops George Hickes (1642-1715), former Dean of Worcester, and Thomas Brett (1667-1743). He defended their writings against their Whig critics, and Boswell records many political remarks by Johnson that find parallels in the published works of the Nonjurors.

Johnson’s first biographer, Sir John Hawkins, tries to argue that Johnson actually sided with Leslie’s main antagonist, the Whig and Latitudinarian theologian, Bishop Benjamin Hoadly (1676-1761). This has been challenged firmly by many Johnson scholars, but as Nicholas Hudson points out in A Political Biography of Samuel Johnson, published in October 2015, Johnson never showed sympathy for the patriarchal origins of government. Like the great Elizabethan Anglican apologist Richard Hooker, Johnson consistently maintained a secular understanding of the origins and nature of society.

When Johnson praises Charles Leslie as “a reasoner,” he is probably referring to The Case of Regale, published in 1710. This is the work by Leslie that Johnson cites most frequently in the fourth edition of his Dictionary.

However, The Case of Regale is not expressly Jacobite in its arguments, and is best understood as a defence of the autonomy of the Church of England from control by both Parliament and the King. So, while Johnson enjoyed Leslie’s energetic reasoning and faith, he may have disapproved of Leslie’s self-alienation from the Church of England.

At the end of his days, George I pardoned Charles Leslie in 1721, saying: “Let the old man go home to Glaslough to die.” He returned to Ireland and died at Glaslough on 13 April 1722.

Samuel Johnson’s statue in the Market Square, Lichfield … he enjoyed Charles Leslie’s energetic reasoning and faith (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Stopping in Monaghan and recalling some long roads we have travelled

Inside the Westenra Arms Hotel in Monghan this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

I spent much of the day travelling to and from a funeral in a small country parish church in the picturesque lakelands of Co Fermanagh, between Roslea and Lisnaskea, close to the border between Co Fermanagh and Co Monaghan.

On the way back to south Dublin, five of us stopped briefly for a late lunch in Monaghan at the Westenra Arms Hotel on the Diamond.

This is an hotel with an interesting history that has served the people of Monaghan for almost 200 years. It has been a silent witness to many social and political events events, and some of the foundations of the older buildings on this site are said to date back to the 17th century.

Thomas Kelly was an innkeeper at the “Westenra Arms” in 1824, when it was probably a coaching inn. In the 1830s, Mr James Curran and his wife Elizabeth were running the hotel. A daughter continued running the hotel, and in the 1860s Miss Emma Curran and sister are listed as leasing the premises from a Mr Mitchell.

The hotel was later bought by Lord Rossmore and rebuilt in the late 19th century. By 1939, Miss Mary F. Bain was the proprietor and manageress of the hotel.

By the end of the 20th century, the hotel’s proprietors were Peter and Anne Driver. Today, the McEnaney family are the proprietors. They undertook major refurbishment work at the hotel in 2003, including the careful restoration of many of the hotel’s original and elegant features.

The Westenra Arms overlooks the Rossmore Memorial in the Diamond in Monaghan’s town centre. The hotel takes its name from a local family, the Westenra family, who are of Dutch descent, and came to Ireland in the 17th century. They lived nearby at Rossmore Park and held the title of Baron Rossmore,

The title was given to General Robert Cuninghame, Commander-in-Chief of Ireland, in 1796, with remainder to the nephews of his wife Elizabeth, Henry Alexander Jones, Warner William Westenra and Henry Westenra.

When the general died the title passed to his nephew Warner William Westenra, was an MP for Monaghan. His eldest son, the third baron, also sat as a Whig MP for Monaghan before succeeding to the family title.

The Rossmore Memorial in the Diamond was erected in 1876 as a memorial to the 4th Lord Rossmore, who died after a hunting accident at Windsor Castle on 28 March 1874. This Victorian monument was described by architectural historian CEB Brett as “formidable and striking.” It is octagonal in shape, with central marble columns supporting a fountain. Around it, the eight grey columns support the pinnacled superstructure that rises to a dome. The dome is surmounted by a spire supported by yet more columns. The letters of Rossmore (also 8 in number) are spaced out around the monument.

Rossmore Park was abandoned in the 1940s, fell into ruins, and was demolished in 1975.

Nearby, in front of the courthouse, stands a monument in memory of the victims of the 1974 Monagahan bombings. It was unveiled by President Mary McAleese on 17 May 2004, on the 30th anniversary of the bombing. The sandstone and metal column contains seven light wells bearing the names of each of the seven victims of the bombing.

I wonder did anyone at today’s reception in Windsor Castle recall that Lord Rossmore had died there 140 years ago.

On the other hand, some of the graves in that small country churchyard in Co Fermanagh and the monument outside Monaghan Courthouse are reminders of the difficult road we have all travelled in the past 40 years that made possible today’s reception for President Michael D Higgins in Windsor Castle, and the attendance of Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness.

The road from Monaghan back to Dublin seemed a little shorter this evening.

Poems for Lent (12): ‘Forest Song,’ by Sir Shane Leslie

‘God ... loveth leafen kind’ (Sir Shane Leslie) ... trees on the Castle Leslie estate in Glaslough, Co Monaghan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

At the end of August, I spent a few peaceful days at Castle Leslie, walking through the woods and by the lakes around Glaslough. It was a time for rest and reflection, and gentle memories of that time came back as I strolled around the shores of Lough Erne in Co Fermanagh at the end of last week.

With that time of reflection and rest in Glaslough in mind, my choice of a Poem for Lent this morning is ‘Forest Song’ by the Irish writer and diplomat, Sir Shane Leslie (1885-1971) of Castle Leslie, who was first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill.

Sir John Randolph Leslie was born on 24 September 1885 in Stratford House, London, into an old land-owning family with an estate of almost 50,000 acres in Co Monaghan, Co Tyrone, Co Fermanagh and Co Donegal that included Castle Leslie in Glaslough, Co Monaghan, the village of Pettigo on the Tyrone-Donegal border, and Lough Derg, the well-known pilgrimage lake and island known as Saint Patrick’s Purgatory.

His father, Sir John Leslie, was descended from John Leslie, Bishop of the Isles, who moved from Scotland to Ireland in 1633 when he became Bishop of Raphoe, and who became Bishop of Clogher after the Caroline Restoration, in 1661. His mother, Leonie Jerome, was the sister of Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome; both were daughters of Leonard W. Jerome.

Shane Leslie’s early education began at home in Castle Leslie with a German governess, and he then went on to Ludgrove, a prep school in Berkshire, to Eton and to King’s College, Cambridge. While he was still an undergraduate Cambridge in 1907, he became a Roman Catholic. Later he also became a supporter of Irish Home Rule and adopted the name Shane as an Anglicised Irish variant of his name John.

After graduating in 1907, he began to travel widely, visiting Russia, where he stayed with Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, and where he developed many of his social values. On his return, his cousin Winston Churchill took an interest in his political ambitions and introduced him to John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons. Redmond persuaded Leslie to run as a Home Rule candidate in Derry City in 1910, but he failed by 57 votes to win the seat.

Now deeply interested in the Gaelic Revival, he travelled to the US the following year. In 1912, he married Marjorie Ide, the youngest daughter of Henry Clay Ide, the US ambassador to Spain and Governor-General of the Philippines.

At the outbreak of World War I, his parents and other family members moved temporarily to London while he enlisted in a British Ambulance Corps. When he became ill he was sent to a military hospital in Malta, and there he finished his first major book of verse, The End of a Chapter (1916).

He spoke out against the execution of the leaders of the Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin, and was sent back to Washington DC to help the British Ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring Rice – who was from a well-known Kerry family and the author of the hymn ‘I vow to thee my country’ – to soften Irish-American hostility to Britain and to secure US intervention in the war. But he continued to look to Ireland for literary inspiration and edited a literary magazine, Ireland, that published new Irish verse.

In the 1918 election, the Irish Parliamentary Party lost massively to Sinn Féin, putting an end to Shane Leslie’s the political ambitions of a disappointed Shane Leslie. Feeling unwanted in Ireland and abandoned by the British, and no longer able to rely on an income from his landholdings, he dedicated himself to a literary life, becoming a member of the Irish Academy of Letters.

In the decades that followed, he wrote extensively and published over forty volumes, including poetry, novels, short stories, memoirs, biographies and essays, and a study, from a conspicuously Roman Catholic perspective, of the Oxford Movement (1933). His most significant literary contribution is Doomsland (1923).

In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald dedicated his novel The Beautiful and Damned to Shane Leslie. That year, in a review of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the Dublin Review, Leslie said: “In this work the spiritually offensive and the physically unclean are united.” He accused Joyce of “little care for the sacra of Catholic or Protestant Christianity,” equating the book with “the lowest depths of Rabelaisian realism.”

He added: “The book must remain impossible to read, and in general undesirable to quote … Our own opinion is that a gigantic effort has been made to fool the world of readers and even the Pretorian guard of critics … From any Christian point of view this book must be proclaimed anathema, simply because it tries to pour ridicule on the most sacred themes and characters in what has been the religion of Europe for nearly two thousand years.”

His time as the editor of the Dublin Review in the 1920s came to an end with the hierarchy’s disapproval of the sexually explicit scenes in the first edition of his autobiographical novel, The Cantab (1926).

In his unpublished memoirs, he wrote

a gentleman’s standing in his world
was signalled by his list of clubs
and it was worth paying hundreds of pounds in subs

The wealth of the Leslies had waned by the 1930s following the Wall Street crash of 1929 and because the farm was by then loss-making. Finding the business of running his estate at Castle Leslie uncreative and boring, he transferred the estate to his eldest son, John Norman Leslie, who later became the 4th baronet, and he transferred Saint Patrick’s Purgatory on Lough Derg to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher, Eugene O’Callaghan. But the Leslies continued to maintain their lifestyle, attendance at the London season and entertaining distinguished visitors at Glaslough, including Anthony Eden.

At the outbreak of World II in 1939, he joined the Home Guard. He spent the remainder of his life between Glaslough and London. With the death of his father in 1944, he succeeded to the family title as the third baronet.

His first wife Marjorie died in 1951. They had three children: Anita King (1914-1985), the novelist and biographer; Sir John Norman Ide Leslie, 4th Baronet (born 1916), popularly known as “Sir Jack,” who continues to entertain guests at Castle Leslie; and Desmond Arthur Peter Leslie (1921-2001), whose children live at Castle Leslie. In 1958, he married his second wife, Iris Carola Laing.

His spent his old age at Hove, and the last book on which he was working was a biography of the hero of his undergraduate youth, MR James. He died on 14 August 1971 in Hove, Sussex, at the age of 85, and was buried at Castle Leslie in Glaslough. His widow died in 1995.

Shane Leslie’s numerous papers are scattered through many collections held by Eton College, the University of Cambridge, Boston College, the University of Notre Dame, the National Library of Ireland and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

Throughout his, life, Shane Leslie was a passionate advocate of reforestation. The woods and trees around the Castle Leslie estate owe much to this concern, which makes ‘Forest Song’ an appropriate poem to select this morning.

A still moment of reflections by the forests and lakes on the Castle Leslie estate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Forest Song, by Sir Shane Leslie

All around I heard the whispering larches
Swinging to the low-lipped wind;
God, they piped, is lilting in our arches,
For He loveth leafen kind.

Ferns I heard, unfolding from their slumber.
Say confiding to the reed:
God well knoweth us, Who loves to number
Us and all our fairy seed.

Voices hummed as of a multitude
Crowding from their lowly sod;
’Twas the stricken daisies where I stood.
Crying to the daisies’ God.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Christmas Poems (21): Advent by Patrick Kavanagh

“ ...the newness that was in every stale thing/ When we looked at it as children” – an old gate and gate lodge on the Castle Leslie estate in Glaslough, Co Monaghan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

Although there are some small January flowers in the garden this morning, the Christmas season appears to be hanging on, and I am reminded this morning [4 January 2012] of two poems by Patrick Kavanagh, ‘Advent’ and ‘A Christmas Childhood.’

I have chosen ‘Advent’ as my Christmas Poem this morning – not because I am looking back at last month’s Advent season, but because, despite its name, this poem, which speaks of “God’s breath in common statement,” draws on very common, everyday scenes in rural Ireland and strong images of these post-Christmas days in early January:

O after Christmas we’ll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning –
We’ll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching ....
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour –
And Christ comes with a January flower.

A lake-side scene on the Castle Leslie estate in Glaslough, Co Monaghan ... Patrick Kavanagh found much of his inspiration in the rural life and landscapes of Co Monaghan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) was born in Mucker, in the parish of Inniskeen in Co Monaghan. His father was a small farmer who supplemented his income by working also as a cobbler, and he grew up surrounded by the “stony-grey hills” that were the inspiration for so much of his poetry.

He left school at the age of 13, and immediately began working on the family farm, but continued in his own self-education. The first book he borrowed from the library in Dundalk was TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. Later, as he began to write his own poetry, he would draw on images of the rural the life he shared with other local farmers buying and selling at fairs and marts, Sunday-mass going, the wakes, weddings and funerals, games of pitch-and-toss at the crossroads, local dances and football matches, and the traditions of a rural Irish Christmas.

His earliest poems were published in the local newspaper, Dundalk Democrat in1928. Three more poems were published by George Russell (Æ) in The Irish Statesman in 1929-1930.

In 1931, Kavanagh walked the fifty miles to Dublin to meet Æ, There he was introduced too to Frank O’Connor. His first collection of poetry, Ploughman and Other Poems, was published by Macmillan in 1936.

Soon after, he moved to London in search of literary work, but he returned to Ireland when he failed to make a living. An autobiography, The Green Fool, appeared in 1938 but was withdrawn after a libel action by Oliver St John Gogarty, who was awarded £100.

Kavanagh worked as a part-time journalist from 1942 to 1944, writing a gossip column for The Irish Press under the pseudonym of Piers Plowman, and later working as the film critic for The Irish Press. During those years, he also became close friends with the future British Poet Laureate, John Betjeman, who was then attached to the British Embassy in Dublin.

A long poem, ‘The Great Hunger,’ was published by Cyril Connolly in the London-based Horizon in 1942. His tragic description of the psychological and sexual frustrations of rural life was recognised as masterly by Frank O’Connor and George Yeats, who republished it in Dublin as a Cuala Press pamphlet. Many regard this poem as Kavanagh’s best, although its publication in Dublin attracted the attention of the police and censors. Later, Tom MacIntyre adapted The Great Hunger for the theatre and it was staged in Dublin by the Abbey Theatre in 1983.

‘Lough Derg’ was also written in 1942, but it was not published until 1971. A collection of verse, A Soul for Sale (1947), was followed by his novel Tarry Flynn (1948), which was said to be “not only the best but the only authentic account of life as it was lived in Ireland this century.” This too was briefly banned, but Tarry Flynn was dramatised later by PJ O’Connor and was staged by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and in Dundalk in 1967. Conall Morrison made a second dramatic adaptation of Tarry Flynn for the Abbey Theatre in 1997.

Kavanagh and his brother Peter, a university professor and also a writer, established a weekly paper, Kavanagh’s Weekly, which was edited by the poet. They called it a “journal of literature and politics” and it ran for 13 issues between 12 April and 5 July 1952. Patrick Kavanagh contributed most of the articles and poems, usually under pseudonyms.

In 1952, a Dublin paper, The Leader, published a profile that depicted Kavanagh as an alcoholic sponger, and he sued for libel. When the case came to trial in 1954, Kavanagh was harshly cross-examined by John A. Costello, defending The Leader, and he lost. The following year he was diagnosed with cancer and had a lung removed.

At this low point, Kavanagh experienced a sort of personal and poetic renewal. Recent Poems (1958) was followed by Come Dance with Kitty Stobling (1960). These two collections include some of his best-known shorter poems. His Collected Poems was followed by Collected Prose (1967).

He married Katherine Barry Moloney in April 1967 and they lived in Waterloo Road, Dublin, until he died on 30 November later that year.

When The Irish Times took a poll of “the nation’s favourite poems” in 2000, 10 of Kavanagh’s poems were listed in the first 50. His poem ‘Raglan Road,’ has been recorded by Luke Kelly and The Dubliners and many other artists, and it remains an ever-popular song.

However, at this time of the year I think of Kavanagh’s poem ‘A Christmas Childhood,’ in which he develops images from his childhood already recalled in The Green Fool, and now recalls “In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland” when he “was six Christmases of age.”

Its rustic realism recalls Tom Kettle’s war-time poetry and his

... dream, born in a herdsman’s shed,
and for the secret Scripture of the poor.”

A rusty gate and an old shed on a farm in Co Monaghan ... there is a rustic realism in the poetry of Patrick Kavangh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

There is an evocation of the stable birth in Bethlehem at an early stage in the poem when he talks about

The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven’s gable ...

and of the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child when he recalls:

There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.

His mother becomes an image Christ’s mother:

Outside the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

There are echoes of TS Eliot’s “three trees against a low sky” in ‘Journey of the Magi’ as Kavanagh recalls how:

I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon — The Three Wise Kings

or of Eliot’s “Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver” when he talks of how

I nicked six nicks on the door-post.

There is a more adult collection of reflections on Christmas and the Christmas season, however, in his poem ‘Advent,’ which is my selected poem this morning.

“We’ll hear it in ... the streets where the village boys are lurching” ... a street scene in the village of Glaslough, Co Monaghan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Advent, by Patrick Kavanagh

We have tested and tasted too much, lover –
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child’s soul, we’ll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

O after Christmas we’ll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning –
We’ll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we’ll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won’t we be rich, my love and I, and
God we shall not ask for reason’s payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God’s breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour –
And Christ comes with a January flower.

‘And Christ comes with a January flower’ – Patrick Kavanagh ... flowers in my garden in Knocklyon this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Tomorrow: ‘The Magi,’ by WB Yeats.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

The unusual stories of the Leslie family

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.

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.