Lord Mount Charles obituary: aristocrat who turned castle into rock venue

Times

2 days ago

'Lord Henry', as the 8th Marquess Conyngham liked to be known in his native Ireland, was a figure of riotous incongruity. Aristocrat and entrepreneur, bohemian and businessman, a sometime poet, journalist, publisher, parliamentary candidate, publican and peer of the realm; he was primarily known as the man who transformed his family's estate at Slane, Co Meath, into one of the most glamorous rock venues in Europe.
Though born into the purple of the Anglo-Irish nobility, he realised from an early age that it was a birthright which might, had he embraced it more fully than he did, have excluded him from his claim to his Irish identity. Accent, class and an English public school education were usually enough to cause people like Mount Charles to be frequently asked in their own country the derogatory question: 'How are you enjoying your holiday here?'
However, Mount Charles ignored the naysayers. He went on to forge an exceptional career whose apogee is sometimes described as the moment he introduced U2 at one of their first main public appearances at Slane Castle in 1981. Had it stopped there, this would have been sufficient to grant him a place in the pantheon of music promoters. A veritable cornucopia of headline acts followed at Slane, including Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, David Bowie, Oasis and Neil Young.
The pastoral setting, provided by a natural amphitheatre that sloped down to the River Boyne, wasn't always tranquil. Shortly before Dylan took to the stage, a wave of drunken fans rioted in Slane village, smashing windows and attempting to burn the police barracks. Security was tightened for later events at the 80,000-capacity venue, and Slane Castle achieved something akin to Glastonbury in the international concert calendar.
Henry Vivien Pierpoint Conyngham, 8th Marquess Conyngham, Earl of Mount Charles, Viscount Slane and Baron Minister of Minster Abbey in the County of Kent was born in 1951. His mother, Eileen (née Wren Newsome), was of Anglo-Irish stock and a legendary huntswoman. She showed the doughty spirit inherited by her firstborn, Henry, when Slane Castle was invaded by protesters objecting to the Mount Charles ownership of fishing rights over the River Boyne. She let in 50 rescuing police officers by throwing the castle key in a jar of face cream out of her bedroom window.
Lady Mount Charles's divorce from her husband, Frederick Conyngham, the 7th Marquess, known as Mount, divided Anglo-Irish Society. From the dashing couple who hosted hunt balls and glamorous dinners, they became estranged when Mount married a lover. Henry's mother never married again. The marquess moved to the Isle of Man as a tax exile when Ireland introduced a wealth tax. Lady Mount Charles lived on in Ireland until the age of 92, claiming, jokingly, that her longevity was solely aimed at annoying her children.
Mount Charles was educated at Harrow and Harvard. His father was disappointed that he did not take the more traditional Oxbridge route, dismissing Harvard as 'not the sort of place where a descendant of Sir Christopher Wren will find solace'. At Harrow, he was known for his wit and dramatic flair rather than for any scholastic achievements. Prowess on the sporting field also evaded him. He only ever won a running event, memorably wearing odd socks, a habit he then adopted as being talismanic for the rest of his life.
The young Viscount Slane, as he then was, adapted quickly to the American way of life. He described his time at Harvard as 'both a cultural awakening and a moral education, which shaped my confidence to speak out on a whole range of topics that might have escaped me had I become one of the oafs at the Bullingdon'. One of the topics was the Vietnam War. In his journalism, he often referenced his Harvard-era student debating background, especially noting the parallels between Nixon's Watergate and later American political turbulence.
Mount Charles married Juliet (née Kitson). They had a daughter and two sons, the eldest of whom, Alexander, succeeds his father in the peerage as the 9th Marquess Conyngham. He divorced his first wife in 1985 and married Lady Iona Grimston, daughter of the 6th Earl of Verulam, who was a Conservative MP and later sat as a Conservative peer in the House of Lords. They had one daughter. He is survived by his wife, children and two brothers.
In the mid-1970s, when Lord Mount Charles, as he had then become, took over Slane Castle from his father, Ireland was navigating a challenging economic malaise during which the large estates of the Anglo-Irish struggled to survive. Mount Charles had been working as an editor at Faber & Faber and enjoying a London life when he was obliged to return home to take over a chipped and faded mansion and a substantial tract of land. On inheriting, he said that he was 'ill-equipped' to run a large estate because the only thing he had learnt from his father was 'how to drink good claret at an early age and how to stand still while wearing heavy tweeds'.
On moving into Slane Castle, he immediately set up a restaurant and a nightclub in the castle, which attracted patrons such as the controversial politician Charles Haughey, who had recently been embroiled in a law trial in which he was charged with the importation of arms into Ireland for use by the IRA in Northern Ireland. The Troubles cast a long shadow over Ireland at the time, and the houses of people like the Conynghams were sometimes viewed with suspicion by republicans.
In his autobiography Public Space — Private Life: A Decade at Slane Castle (1989), he wrote: 'I was an Anglo-Irish anachronism … returning to an Ireland I loved but still a country bedevilled by division and much hypocrisy.'' In the television documentary A Lord in Slane (2024), he commented on the difficulties of navigating sectarian suspicion and the threats aimed at him by republicans when he hosted the U2 concert in 1981.
Politically, he was aligned with the Fine Gael party, led until 1987 by Garret FitzGerald. Traditionally, it was seen as the Irish party more sympathetic to the Anglo-Irish ascendancy class as it embraced a policy of pluralism and inclusivity. In the 1992 Dail elections, Mount Charles stood as a Fine Gael candidate, polling a respectable 4,161 votes but failing to win a seat. He was also approached by the party to run for the European parliament, but eventually became disillusioned with what he called 'the stagnation of the party's constitutional agenda'.
Mount Charles leaves behind a unique cultural legacy that paved the way for other enterprising landowners in Ireland to save their crumbling houses and breathe new life into an often-stagnating heritage. A gifted raconteur with a flair for publicity, he became a flamboyant media personality unafraid to express his controversial views on politics in a changing Ireland. He became the master promoter of the idea that the old Irish aristocracy could embrace change without surrendering its identity.
Mount Charles was not beyond sending up his ancient background. He particularly enjoyed telling stories of his great-great-great-grandmother's affair with King George IV and pointing out items at Slane Castle which he would describe as 'got through the King's mistress'.
Lord Mount Charles, 8th Marquess Conyngham, rock promoter, was born on May 23, 1951. He died of cancer on June 18, 2025, aged 74