Obituary: Lord Henry Mount Charles, aristocrat and businessman who turned Slane Castle into a music mecca

Irish Independent

5 days ago

Over the decades the picturesque venue has hosted concerts by U2, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Madonna and many others, earning him the added title of 'the rock and roll peer'.
Mount Charles took over the Co Meath castle from his father, Frederick – the 7th Marquess of Conyngham – in the summer of 1976, after he was given a stark choice: assume control of the 'family firm' or the estate would be sold.
This ultimatum came after Frederick decided to domicile himself in the Isle of Man because of the imposition of a wealth tax by the Fine Gael finance minister, Richie Ryan.
'It was a move I made reluctantly, for in the depths of my heart I knew it was the end of my freedom to plough my own furrow, and that I was casting myself in a stereotyped role, from which I was going to have great difficulty escaping,' Henry wrote in his autobiography.
'From being my own master where I could escape from the feeling of being, at times, a stranger in my own country, I was thrown back, aged twenty-five, as Lord Mount Charles, owner of the castle. I was an Anglo-Irish anachronism tolerated in a modern Ireland...I was returning to an Ireland I loved, but still a country bedevilled by division and much hypocrisy.'
In the years that followed, Mount Charles – or Mr Conyngham, as former taoiseach Charlie Haughey insisted on calling him – harboured political ambitions but failed to be elected for Fine Gael to the Dáil for the Louth constituency in 1992 or the Senate in 1997.
He also flirted with the idea of joining Dessie O'Malley's Progressive Democrats, but that too came to nothing.
Instead, Lord Henry (he officially he became the 8th Marquess of Conyngham on the death of his father in 2009) was best known for his rock and roll lifestyle, wearing odd socks and a seemingly laid-back approach to life which included writing blogs and a column for the Irish Mirror.
His autobiography was titled Public Space – Private Life: A Decade at Slane Castle, indicating that while he maintained a public persona to publicise the castle and its various business activities, he also tried to live another life as a blue-blooded aristocrat with close connections to the titled families of Ireland and Britain.
Henry Vivien Pierpont Conyngham was born on May 25, 1951. Although he grew up in Slane and always considered himself Irish, he was educated at Harrow, the upper-class English public school, and later Harvard in the United States, before spending a year working in an Anglican mission in South Africa.
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In September 1971, barely 21 years of age, he married Juliet Kitson, and was living in a London basement with her and their first child when through her mother, Penelope, he got to know the American tycoon, J Paul Getty.
Then considered the richest man in the world, Getty liked 'to be surrounded by a court of shallow women who flattered him', according to Mount Charles.
Through this social circle at the Getty mansion in Surrey, Mount Charles got his first real job with the publishing house, Faber.
He had barely settled into the role when he got the call from his father to return to Slane.
Henry insisted that if he was to come back to Ireland, he would only accept total control.
Once back home, Mount Charles became the representative of auction house Sotheby's, searching out treasures for the international auction market.
He also took in wealthy paying guests, opened a restaurant in the grounds and held lavish shooting parties during the 'season'.
Slane was also touted as a film location and among the stars entertained in the castle were the actress Lesley-Anne Down during the filming of The First Great Train Robbery, and Lee Marvin when he came to film The Big Red One.
Slane also featured in an episode of the RTÉ soap opera The Riordans, and Mount Charles played a stiff-upper-lip British officer in an episode of Remington Steele, starring Pierce Brosnan, a 'commoner' from nearby Navan.
In 1981 Mount Charles teamed up with concert promoters Eamonn McCann and Denis Desmond for an outdoor concert at Slane Castle featuring Thin Lizzy, with U2 as supporting act.
Although it initially divided the village, the concert drew a crowd of 18,000 and was a huge success. It marked the beginning of annual concerts that brought the biggest rock and roll acts in the world to perform with the River Boyne as a backdrop.
Around the same time his marriage was in turmoil and in March, 1983, his wife Juliet and their three children moved out, going to live in the Isle of Man.
After the success of the first concert, Mount Charles then went after the biggest rock band in the world, The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger had dined in Slane Castle during the 1970s when his friend Desmond Guinness of Leixlip Castle brought him and his wife Bianca for dinner with Mount Charles' father, 'who was astonished that he seemed so civilised'.
Jagger and company opted to play Slane Castle, on Saturday July 24, 1982. 'A tidal wave hit that castle' Mount Charles recalled, and it included a long 'session' drinking Guinness with Jagger and his new girlfriend Jerry Hall.
The Bob Dylan concert in the summer of 1984 led to a crisis that almost closed the castle as a concert venue. Fuelled by drink and drugs, an element of the attendance smashed up the village. It wasn't until late on the night of the concert that gardaí were able to regain control.
It was the recording of an album, rather than a concert, that would get Slane Castle back on track
Mount Charles later called them 'gurriers, bastards, drunken louts'. He was consoled by Bono and Senator Michael D Higgins, but the following morning's Sunday papers ran with headlines such as 'Savagery at Slane', and many local people held him personally responsible for the carnage.
It was the recording of an album, rather than a concert, that would get Slane Castle back on track. After discussions with manager Paul McGuinness, U2 recorded their album The Unforgettable Fire, at the castle in 1984. 'U2 had helped inaugurate Slane as a venue, and they were sympathetic to the pull and the atmosphere and the great antiquity that pervaded the Boyne Valley,' Mount Charles said.
On a champagne-tasting trip in France, Mount Charles met Iona Grimston, who was doing some work for Moet at the time. Their relationship blossomed and they married in 1985. They have one daughter, Tamara.
Although mainly associated with Slane Castle, Henry Mount Charles lived most of the latter part of his life at nearby Beau Parc, a smaller stately home that was left to him by a bachelor relative, Sir Oliver Lampart, in 1986. After restoring the house, he and his wife moved in, finding it 'more intimate and more private' and a respite from the frenetic activity of Slane Castle.
The castle caught fire in 1992. It suffered considerable damage, with many family artefacts and paintings lost in the blaze and the building itself was left a blackened shell. Despite the enormity of the task, Mount Charles oversaw its restoration in the years that followed.
In more recent years, Mount Charles handed over control of many of the business activities at the castle to his son, Alex Conyngham. But he remained active despite a long-running battle against cancer that was first diagnosed in 2014 and returned in 2016.
Mount Charles greatly added to 'the gaiety of the nation' over the last 40 years. He was a committed and passionate, if sometimes sceptical, Irishman. He also managed to demystify the wealthy Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendency and, as such, lessened some of the latent resentment against his class that marked them out as unwanted symbols of British rule.
Lord Henry Mount Charles, the 8th Marquess of Conyngham, died on Wednesday, June 18, at the age of 74. He is survived by his wife, Iona, and his four children.