Obituary: Eileen Wren, Countess of Mount Charles

Eileen Wren, Countess of Mount Charles, of Galtrim House, Co Meath who died, aged 92, was a former joint master of the Meath Hounds and a glamorous society figure.

The breakup of her marriage to the then Earl of Mount Charles in the 1960s left her in sole possession of Slane Castle. In July 1970 it was invaded by members of the National Waters Restoration League protesting against the family “usurping the people’s right to fish the Boyne over one and half miles at Slane”. Tricolours were draped on the parapets and the house barricaded by the intruders. Foolishly they readmitted Lady Mount Charles when she returned from alerting the local gardaí. When a force of 50 gardaí came the next day she wrote a note telling them how they could break in, wrapped it round a pot of face cream and hurled it out of her bedroom window. The intruders were soon evicted.

Lady Mount Charles was born at Heathfield House near Ballina in 1924. Her father Clement Wren Newsam, known as Kong, a descendant of the great architect Sir Christopher Wren, hailed from New Zealand. He moved to Ireland after service in the first World War and married in 1921, the widow of Bertram Bourke of Heathfield, who had been killed in action leaving two young daughters.

Shortly after Eileen’s birth, the Heathfield estate was taken over by the Land Commission and the family allocated a farm in Beauparc, Co Meath. Thanks to the enterprise of her father, who started Navan Carpets, young Eileen had a privileged upbringing. While she showed some aptitude for art in the Preston School Navan, horses became her lifelong love and she was rather a tomboy growing up. She spent the later years of the second World War in England assisting the war effort in nursing and catering. She even got to Berlin at the war’s end in time to see the Reichstag smouldering.

Blond and beautiful, her marriage in 1950 to her Meath neighbour Mount, as the young the Earl of Mount Charles was known, was fairytale stuff. Three sons were born. Slane Castle came to life with hunt balls and fashionable parties. It was rented out as a film venue; the handsome Mount Charleses featured as extras (with their voices dubbed) in a movie entitled Captain Lightfoot starring Rock Hudson.

Always fun loving, she had about her a quality of innocence and was shattered when Mount compounded his infidelities by forming a permanent attachment that was to lead to marriage with another woman. The scandal rocked their circle with many former friends refusing to receive Mount and his new lady. Lady Mount Charles obtained an English divorce in 1970 and moved out of Slane to live at the more manageable Galtrim House.

She hunted regularly and also bred horses, one of which, Last Suspect, having been sold on, won the Aintree Grand National. She was a glamorous presence at social events, especially race meetings, where she had occasional runners.

Galtrim was the scene of gracious and discerning hospitality. Although not oblivious to her own social position, she prided herself on the breadth of her acquaintance – Eamonn Andrews was a long-standing friend and she was on terms with Charlie Haughey.

She was not short of suitors but, once stung, she steered clear of further close entanglements. She was especially close to her elder sister, the accomplished artist and children’s writer Patita Nicholson, who lived until her death in the elegant gate lodge at Galtrim.

Lady Mount Charles viewed with astringency some of the activities of her spirited sons and joked that she would avenge herself by living long enough to be a problem to them.

She rejoiced in the success Henry, the eldest, made of Slane, albeit that the concerts she always graced seldom coincided with her own taste in music.

Active in the Vestry of her local church she led protests when the church authorities decided to close it in 1990. “If we were to stay open,” she told reporters, “we wouldn’t want much – just a couple of jolly services a few times a year and the churchyard cared for.” Happily plans were under way before her death to turn the abandoned church into a local cultural centre and fears she expressed that there would be an overgrown elder bush straggling all over her grave there are now less likely to come to pass.

She is survived by her three sons, Henry, now Marquess Conyngham, Simon and Patrick and also by grandchildren and great grandchildren.