Desmond FitzGerald, the 29th and last Knight of Glin who died on September 14 aged 74, was a connoisseur of the decorative arts who worked for the Victoria and Albert Museum and the fine art auctioneers Christie’s and, as a campaigning president of the Irish Georgian Society, helped to save many architectural treasures over the Irish Sea from dereliction or insensitive development.
The greater part of his energies, however, he devoted to restoring and preserving his family’s ancestral seat of Glin Castle, on the Shannon estuary in Co Limerick.
The Knight of Glin, Desmond FitzGerald and his wife Madam Olda FitzGerald in the grounds of Glin Castle
The Knight of Glin, also called the Black Knight, is one of three ancient Irish hereditary titles dating from the 13th and 14th centuries and recognised by Irish Republican governments. (FitzGerald’s kinsman, Adrian FitzGerald, the 24th Knight of Kerry, is known as the Green Knight; Maurice FitzGibbon, who died in 1611, was the 12th and last White Knight.)
The Black Knights descend from a younger or illegitimate son of John FitzGerald, 1st Baron Desmond, grandson of Maurice FitzGerald, a companion-in-arms of Strongbow, the 12th century Norman conqueror of Ireland. Glin, an estate which once encompassed more than 30,000 acres, was granted to this branch of the FitzGerald family in the early 14th century by their overlord at the time, the FitzGerald Earl of Desmond.
Unlike their ill-fated overlords, the Knights of Glin survived both the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland and the Cromwellian and Jacobite wars, even though they were invariably on the losing side. In 1567 the then Knight of Glin, Thomas FitzGerald, was hanged, drawn and quartered and had much of his estate confiscated for his role in the Desmond Rebellion against Elizabeth I. Legend has it that his mother seized his severed head and drank his blood before gathering his body parts for burial. In the Jacobite wars of the 17th century another Knight was told that if he did not surrender, then his six-year-old son (who had been kidnapped and tied to a cannon) would be blown to bits. He replied that as he was virile and his wife was strong, it would be easy to produce another son.
Other colourful ancestors include “The Cracked Knight”, who is said to have ridden his horse up the back stairs; “The Big Knight”, who took solace in the whiskey bottle; and “The Knight of the Women”, who was reputed to have fathered at least 15 illegitimate children, but was forgiven because he was a Gaelic scholar (and native speaker) revered by the local people.
But Desmond FitzGerald would refer to the “general improvidence” of his ancestors. For generations the Knights of Glin kept debt collectors at bay by setting a mob on to them, although the 21st Knight, Richard, spent time in a Dublin prison for unpaid monies. By the time the 24th Knight, Colonel John Bateman FitzGerald, inherited the castle in 1781, the debts could no longer be avoided. The original medieval castle of Glin was a ruin and the Knights had moved into a new “castle” — in reality a long thatched house overlooking the River Shannon. Expensive carriages, 5,000 acres of land and many treasured family heirlooms had to be sold to make ends meet.
The Colonel’s marriage to Margaretta Maria Gwyn, a wealthy Englishwoman, led to a temporary respite in the family’s inexorably declining fortunes. He added a large Georgian house to the castle in 1795, where she oversaw the installation of neo-classical plasterwork ceilings and a dramatic double flying staircase. But they never got around to finishing the third floor and, when the Colonel died in 1803, it was found he had no money left. An auction was held of the entire contents of the house — the only things not sold were the family portraits and the library shelving. In the 1820s “The Knight of the Women” added battlements and false arrow loops, but the third floor remained unfinished — a maze of exposed rafters and bat colonies.
Yet the family was tenacious in hanging on to what remained of its patrimony. In 1923 Desmond’s grandfather, the 27th Knight, saved the castle from being raided by a Sinn Fein mob. Confined to a wheelchair after a stroke, he refused to leave the castle, roaring: “You’ll have to burn it with me inside, boys.” On hearing this, the rebels were said to have dispersed to a village hostelry while the Knight used the petrol they had left behind to run the farm machinery.
Desmond FitzGerald inherited the castle and title aged 12, on the death of his father from tuberculosis in 1949. By this time, all that remained of the estate was 500 acres of park and grazing land. The castle was dilapidated and there was very little good furniture.
Things began to look up after his mother, Veronica, married again in 1954. Her second husband was the Canadian millionaire, Ray Milner. Together they set about restoring Glin Castle after centuries of neglect and, after moving back to Glin from London in 1975, Desmond and his wife Olda threw their own energies into the project.
They spent decades combing auction rooms in an attempt to buy back the pictures, drawings and china that had been sold in leaner times, steadily restoring the fabric of the building and “filling in the incomplete pretensions of the 18th and 19th century” as Desmond put it, including completing the top floor. A plaque in the garden bears the legend 1785-2002 — a construction span of 217 years.
They started a bed and breakfast business and in 2002 turned the castle into a small hotel which did well for a number of years, and where the 29th Knight, a youthful and handsome figure into his 70s, continued to cut a dash in his signature tweed jacket and black polo neck sweater. But the international credit crunch and the Irish economic nosedive hit them hard and finances became increasingly strained.
In 2009 hundreds of paintings and objets d’art from Glin Castle went under the hammer at Christie’s, raising two million euros: “Glin has been the ancestral property of my family for over 700 years,” FitzGerald explained. “It is my greatest hope that it will continue to remain in the family and be enjoyed and cherished long into the future.”
Desmond John Villiers FitzGerald was born on July 13 1937, the youngest of three children and an only son. His father, the 28th Knight of Glin, was a keen fisherman and driver of vintage sports cars, for which he was known locally as “the Nippy Knight”. His English mother, Veronica Villiers, was a considerable beauty and a cousin of Winston Churchill.
His parents’ marriage was tempestuous, but the children did not see them much. Desmond, along with his sisters, Rachel and Fiola, lived in four dilapidated rooms on the unfinished third floor of castle, while their parents occupied the main floor. He described his childhood as lonely.
During the Second World War (in which the Republic of Ireland was neutral), his father tried to join the Irish Guards but failed the medical. Desmond recalled an occasion when, holidaying in County Kerry, they discovered that a German was staying at the same hotel: “My mother, who was a very forthright woman, informed the manager that she would not have dinner in the company of a German, so she ordered her dinner in her bedroom. All the other people in the hotel followed her example, which caused quite a ripple. She had a plan that if they came up the river Shannon, she would ask all the officers to dinner, and when they sat down, they would be given poisoned soup.”
Desmond was sent to England from the age of eight and claimed to have gone to “more schools than you’ve had hot dinners”. But he settled down at Stowe, an “architectural paradise” which inspired him to study Architecture and Art History at university.
He first went to the University of British Columbia, where his mother lived part-time after her second marriage. He then took a Master’s degree at Harvard. In 1965 he moved to London, where he got a job at the Victoria and Albert Museum as a curator in the furniture department.
FitzGerald had collected antiques from his early teens and in London he spent much of his spare time prowling around antique shops, finding it possible to buy Irish antiques quite cheaply, as few people knew anything about Irish furniture, and Irish collectors concentrated on silver and glass.
It was around this time he met his first wife, Loulou de la Falaise, who would become famous as the muse of Yves St Laurent, but the marriage lasted less than a year. They remained friends, however, and in 1970 he married Olda Willes, a great friend of Loulou’s.
After returning to Ireland in 1975 FitzGerald was appointed Christie’s Irish representative and became involved in the Irish Georgian Society, founded in 1958 by Desmond Guinness. “While a certain animosity still exists towards these homes given that they were arguably the product of an enslaved society,” he argued, “people should remember that the craftsmen who fashioned them came from the Irish community as a whole.” He served as the society’s president from 1991.
FitzGerald wrote and lectured extensively on Irish art, architecture and decorative arts. A governor of the National Gallery of Ireland, he published a family history, The Knights Of Glin in 2009. Other books he published included Irish Furniture (2007) and The Irish Country House (2010, both co-written with James Peill). He was also elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and served on the boards of the Irish Landmark Trust and the Castletown Foundation.
Desmond and Olda FitzGerald had three daughters; the eldest, Catherine, is married to the actor Dominic West and was previously married to the Earl of Durham.
The Knight was philosophical about having no son to inherit the Glin title and estate: “I can’t really feel too sad about it. A male heir would have inherited an impossible burden”. None the less Olda, Catherine, Honor and Nesta FitzGerald intend to continue the restoration of Glin Castle to which he contributed so much.
The Colonel’s marriage to Margaretta Maria Gwyn, a wealthy Englishwoman, led to a temporary respite in the family’s inexorably declining fortunes. He added a large Georgian house to the castle in 1795, where she oversaw the installation of neo-classical plasterwork ceilings and a dramatic double flying staircase. But they never got around to finishing the third floor and, when the Colonel died in 1803, it was found he had no money left. An auction was held of the entire contents of the house — the only things not sold were the family portraits and the library shelving. In the 1820s “The Knight of the Women” added battlements and false arrow loops, but the third floor remained unfinished — a maze of exposed rafters and bat colonies.
Yet the family was tenacious in hanging on to what remained of its patrimony. In 1923 Desmond’s grandfather, the 27th Knight, saved the castle from being raided by a Sinn Fein mob. Confined to a wheelchair after a stroke, he refused to leave the castle, roaring: “You’ll have to burn it with me inside, boys.” On hearing this, the rebels were said to have dispersed to a village hostelry while the Knight used the petrol they had left behind to run the farm machinery.
Desmond FitzGerald inherited the castle and title aged 12, on the death of his father from tuberculosis in 1949. By this time, all that remained of the estate was 500 acres of park and grazing land. The castle was dilapidated and there was very little good furniture.
Things began to look up after his mother, Veronica, married again in 1954. Her second husband was the Canadian millionaire, Ray Milner. Together they set about restoring Glin Castle after centuries of neglect and, after moving back to Glin from London in 1975, Desmond and his wife Olda threw their own energies into the project.
They spent decades combing auction rooms in an attempt to buy back the pictures, drawings and china that had been sold in leaner times, steadily restoring the fabric of the building and “filling in the incomplete pretensions of the 18th and 19th century” as Desmond put it, including completing the top floor. A plaque in the garden bears the legend 1785-2002 — a construction span of 217 years.
They started a bed and breakfast business and in 2002 turned the castle into a small hotel which did well for a number of years, and where the 29th Knight, a youthful and handsome figure into his 70s, continued to cut a dash in his signature tweed jacket and black polo neck sweater. But the international credit crunch and the Irish economic nosedive hit them hard and finances became increasingly strained.
In 2009 hundreds of paintings and objets d’art from Glin Castle went under the hammer at Christie’s, raising two million euros: “Glin has been the ancestral property of my family for over 700 years,” FitzGerald explained. “It is my greatest hope that it will continue to remain in the family and be enjoyed and cherished long into the future.”
Desmond John Villiers FitzGerald was born on July 13 1937, the youngest of three children and an only son. His father, the 28th Knight of Glin, was a keen fisherman and driver of vintage sports cars, for which he was known locally as “the Nippy Knight”. His English mother, Veronica Villiers, was a considerable beauty and a cousin of Winston Churchill.
His parents’ marriage was tempestuous, but the children did not see them much. Desmond, along with his sisters, Rachel and Fiola, lived in four dilapidated rooms on the unfinished third floor of castle, while their parents occupied the main floor. He described his childhood as lonely.
During the Second World War (in which the Republic of Ireland was neutral), his father tried to join the Irish Guards but failed the medical. Desmond recalled an occasion when, holidaying in County Kerry, they discovered that a German was staying at the same hotel: “My mother, who was a very forthright woman, informed the manager that she would not have dinner in the company of a German, so she ordered her dinner in her bedroom. All the other people in the hotel followed her example, which caused quite a ripple. She had a plan that if they came up the river Shannon, she would ask all the officers to dinner, and when they sat down, they would be given poisoned soup.”
Desmond was sent to England from the age of eight and claimed to have gone to “more schools than you’ve had hot dinners”. But he settled down at Stowe, an “architectural paradise” which inspired him to study Architecture and Art History at university.
He first went to the University of British Columbia, where his mother lived part-time after her second marriage. He then took a Master’s degree at Harvard. In 1965 he moved to London, where he got a job at the Victoria and Albert Museum as a curator in the furniture department.
FitzGerald had collected antiques from his early teens and in London he spent much of his spare time prowling around antique shops, finding it possible to buy Irish antiques quite cheaply, as few people knew anything about Irish furniture, and Irish collectors concentrated on silver and glass.
It was around this time he met his first wife, Loulou de la Falaise, who would become famous as the muse of Yves St Laurent, but the marriage lasted less than a year. They remained friends, however, and in 1970 he married Olda Willes, a great friend of Loulou’s.
After returning to Ireland in 1975 FitzGerald was appointed Christie’s Irish representative and became involved in the Irish Georgian Society, founded in 1958 by Desmond Guinness. “While a certain animosity still exists towards these homes given that they were arguably the product of an enslaved society,” he argued, “people should remember that the craftsmen who fashioned them came from the Irish community as a whole.” He served as the society’s president from 1991.
FitzGerald wrote and lectured extensively on Irish art, architecture and decorative arts. A governor of the National Gallery of Ireland, he published a family history, The Knights Of Glin in 2009. Other books he published included Irish Furniture (2007) and The Irish Country House (2010, both co-written with James Peill). He was also elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and served on the boards of the Irish Landmark Trust and the Castletown Foundation.
Desmond and Olda FitzGerald had three daughters; the eldest, Catherine, is married to the actor Dominic West and was previously married to the Earl of Durham.
The Knight was philosophical about having no son to inherit the Glin title and estate: “I can’t really feel too sad about it. A male heir would have inherited an impossible burden”. None the less Olda, Catherine, Honor and Nesta FitzGerald intend to continue the restoration of Glin Castle to which he contributed so much.
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