Lady Louisa Conolly | |
---|---|
Born | Lady Louisa Augusta Lennox 5 December 1743 |
Died | August 1821 (aged 77–78) |
Resting place | Tea Lane Graveyard, Celbridge |
Known for | Lennox sisters |
Spouse | |
Parent(s) | Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond Sarah Cadogan |
Lady Louisa Conolly (5 December 1743 – August 1821) was an English noblewoman. She was the third of the famous Lennox Sisters, and was notable among them for leading a wholly uncontroversial life filled with good works.
Born Lady Louisa Augusta Lennox, she was the third of the four Lennox sisters portrayed in Stella Tillyard's book Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah Lennox and in the BBC television series based on it. The Lennox sisters were the daughters of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, and Lady Sarah Cadogan. The 2nd duke's father, the first duke, was an illegitimate son of King Charles II of England.
Louisa was still a child when her parents died within a year of each other in 1750 and 1751. After this, Lady Louisa was brought up by her much older sister Emily FitzGerald, Duchess of Leinster, in Kildare. In 1758, aged 15, she married Thomas Conolly (1738–1803), grand-nephew of William Conolly, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. Her husband, a wealthy land-owner and keen horseman, was also a successful politician who was elected to Parliament as early as 1759. The couple lived in the Palladian mansion Castletown House in County Kildare, the decoration of which she directed throughout the 1760s and 1770s. The Conolly summer residence 'Cliff House' on the banks of the River Erne between Belleek, County Fermanagh and Ballyshannon County Donegal was demolished as part of the Erne Hydroelectric scheme, which constructed the Cliff and Cathaleen's Fall hydroelectric power stations. Cliff hydroelectric power station was constructed on the site of 'Cliff House' and was commissioned in 1950.
Themselves unhappily childless, at that point they took up the welfare of young children from disadvantaged backgrounds as a lifelong project, contributing both money and effort towards initiatives which would enable foundlings and vagabonds to acquire productive skills and support themselves. They developed one of the first Industrial Schools where boys learnt trades, and Lady Louisa took active personal interest in mentoring the students. [1] In middle age, Lady Louisa also virtually adopted her niece Emily Napier (1783–1863), the daughter of her sister Lady Sarah Lennox. Emily, who would spend long months with her aunt in Kildare, married Sir Henry Bunbury, 7th Baronet, and moved to Suffolk, although she remained close to her aunt until her death.
Thomas Conolly died in 1803. Upon his death, the major part of his estates, which included Wentworth Castle, passed to a distant relative, Frederick Vernon. Lady Louisa received the Castletown House and estate, as also certain liquid investments and valuable urban properties, which enabled her to live in comfort and continue her activities until her own death in 1821. She willed these substantial properties to a great-nephew, Edward Michael Pakenham (grandson of Thomas' sister Harriet), later the MP for Donegal, [2]
The 1769 travelogue "Hibernia Curiosa: A Letter from a Gentleman in Dublin to his Friend at Dover in Kent..." by John Bush was dedicated to Conolly. The dedication reads:
In 1999, a 6-part miniseries based on the lives of Louisa Lennox and her sisters aired in the U.K. It was called Aristocrats (TV mini-series).
Georgiana Carolina Fox, 1st Baroness Holland, of Holland, known as Lady Caroline Lennox before 1744 and as Lady Caroline Fox from 1744 to 1762, was the eldest of the Lennox sisters.
Emily FitzGerald, Duchess of Leinster, known before 1747 as Lady Emily Lennox, from 1747 to 1761 as The Countess of Kildare and from 1761 to 1766 as The Marchioness of Kildare, was the second of the famous Lennox sisters, daughters of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond.
Lady Sarah Lennox was the most notorious of the famous Lennox sisters, daughters of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond and Sarah Cadogan.
Lieutenant-General James FitzGerald, 1st Duke of Leinster, PC (Ire), styled Lord Offaly until 1743 and known as The Earl of Kildare between 1743 and 1761 and as The Marquess of Kildare between 1761 and 1766, was an Anglo-Irish nobleman, soldier and politician.
Celbridge is a town and townland on the River Liffey in County Kildare, Ireland. It is 23 km (14 mi) west of Dublin. Both a local centre and a commuter town within the Greater Dublin Area, it is located at the intersection of the R403 and R405 regional roads. As of the 2022 census, Celbridge was the third largest town in County Kildare by population, with 20,601 residents.
Castletown House, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, is a Palladian country house built in 1722 for William Conolly, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. It formed the centrepiece of an 800-acre (320 ha) estate. The estate was sold in 1965, and later sub-divided. The house and a core demesne of 120 acres were bought by a group of people looking to preserve them, and became the first major project of the Irish Georgian Society; they were later transferred to a dedicated charitable foundation, and ultimately to State ownership. Most of the wider estate remaining was divided between State forestry company, Coillte, and developers, and parts were built on, notably the former orchard and walled garden. In September 2023, the main access road and car parking became the subject of access issues and protests.
Sarah Lennox, Duchess of Richmond, was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Caroline from 1724 to 1737. She was the mother of the famous Lennox sisters.
Stella Tillyard FRSL is an English author and historian, educated at Oxford and Harvard Universities and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1999 her bestselling book Aristocrats was made into a six-part series for BBC1/Masterpiece Theatre sold to over 20 countries. Winner of the Meilleur Livre Étranger, the Longman/History Today Prize and the Fawcett Prize, she has taught at Harvard; the University of California, Los Angeles; Birkbeck, London and the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary, London. She is a visiting professor in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
William Conolly, also known as Speaker Conolly, was an Irish Whig politician, Commissioner of Revenue, lawyer and landowner. He was an influential figure in Irish politics, serving as Speaker of the Irish House of Commons between 1715 and his death.
Admiral Sir Thomas Foley GCB was a Royal Navy officer and "Hero of the Battle of the Nile".
Colonel George Napier, styled "The Honourable", was a British Army officer, most notable for his marriage to Lady Sarah Lennox, and for his sons Charles James Napier, William Francis Patrick Napier and George Thomas Napier, all of whom were noted military officers, collectively referred to as "Wellington’s Colonels". He also served as Comptroller of Army Accounts in Ireland from 1799 until his death in 1804.
The Lennox sisters were four eighteenth-century British aristocrats, the daughters of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond (1701–1750) by his wife Lady Sarah Cadogan (1705–1751).
William James Conolly was an Irish landowner and Whig politician who sat in the Irish House of Commons from 1727 to 1754 and in the British House of Commons from 1734 to 1754.
Thomas Conolly was an Irish landowner and Member of Parliament.
Edward Michael Conolly was an Irish Member of Parliament.
Conolly is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Thomas Conolly was an Irish Conservative Party politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Donegal from 1849 until his death in 1876, aged 53. The Conolly summer residence Cliff House on the banks of the River Erne between Belleek, County Fermanagh, and Ballyshannon, County Donegal, was demolished as part of the Erne Hydroelectric scheme, which constructed the Cliff and Cathaleen's Fall hydroelectric power stations. Cliff hydroelectric power station was constructed on the site of Cliff House and was commissioned in 1950.
Tea Lane Graveyard is a Christian cemetery located in Celbridge, Ireland.
5, St James's Square is a Grade II* listed historic townhouse in London, England, built 1748–51 by William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford (1722–1791) to the design of Matthew Brettingham the Elder. It remained the London residence of the descendants of his sister until after 1968, and in 1984 was the site of the "Libyan Peoples' Bureau" from which shots were fired which caused the murder of Yvonne Fletcher.
Katherine Conolly was an Irish political hostess, landowner, and philanthropist.