Elizabeth, Countess of Meath:ELIZABETH, COUNTESS of Meath, who has died just short of her 96th birthday, was the daughter of Geoffrey Bowlby and his wife the Hon Lettice Annesley, whose father was the 11th Viscount Valentia.
Capt Bowlby was killed at Ypres in 1915 and subsequently Mrs Bowlby was lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of York and continued as a woman of the bedchamber when the duchess became queen.
In 1940, Elizabeth (Betty) married Anthony Brabazon, who was a major in the Grenadier Guards. He retired from the army shortly after the war, and they returned to Ireland.
His father died in 1947 and he became the 14th Earl of Meath.
They took over Kilruddery outside Bray, Co Wicklow, which the Brabazons have owned since the 17th century. The present house, that incorporates the earlier one, was built in the 1820s in the Elizabethan revival style by the Morrisons, the most fashionable architects of their day.
There were several alterations during the next hundred years, including the addition of a handsome conservatory with a parapet of fretwork modelled on the diamond tiara sold by the then Lady Meath for charity during the Famine.
Soon after the new Lord and Lady Meath came to live in Kilruddery, the house was found to be badly affected with dry rot so that the north wing containing the great hall and dining room were demolished, thus reducing the house by approximately a third.
Betty Meath was very much involved in the renovation of the house and she herself painted the entire ceiling of the great drawing room with its elaborate plasterwork of octagonals containing wreaths and paterae.
While thus engaged, she discovered, incised on the cornice, the date and the names of all the craftsmen of a Bray firm that had originally created the plasterwork.
Betty Meath was a small elegant figure, who appeared delicate, but this belied her strength and determination.
In 1993, petrol bombs were thrown through the windows of the library partially destroying the bookcase that had been made by Chippendale. Betty Meath behaved with great sang froid and was in no way intimidated. “We survived the Blitz,” she remarked.
The house and grounds has been used as a location for such films as My Left Foot, Lassie, and for Far and Away with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
These caused quite a lot of inconvenience, but Betty Meath said philosophically that at least it would pay for re-puttying the windows of the house.
Betty Meath was a garden enthusiast, which was most fortunate for Kilruddery’s remarkable 17th century garden that had been laid out for the fourth earl.
It is the best surviving example of the formal garden in Ireland with its twin canals and geometrical hedges of lime, hornbeam, beech and yew – “so much clipping”, she lamented.
It was she, with the aid of only two gardeners, who did much of the physical work and could often be found bent over a bed either planting or weeding. One of her other great pleasures was going racing and she was a regular attendee at Ascot.
She and her husband, who died in 1998, were extremely generous in opening the house and grounds for various charitable events, functions and also for the plays that were performed in the sylvan theatre, an outdoor amphitheatre that is walled in with beech hedges.
The Meaths over the generations have been great benefactors to Bray, donating the Town Hall, the esplanade and the People’s Park.
In Betty Meath, the community found a genuine friend and neighbour. Once she and her husband were going to a party at the British embassy where there was tight security. When the young guard saw their card with the inscription “The Earl and Countess of Meath”, he looked at them and said: “Jayus! I didn’t know that there were any of you lot left.”
Betty immediately replied: “Both of us are very old and are genuine antiques.”
She is survived by her two sons and her two daughters.
Elizabeth Mary, Countess of Meath: born February 3rd, 1913; died January 26th, 2009