Rose Talbot:ROSE TALBOT, the last of her family to live at Malahide Castle in Co Dublin, which they had owned for 800 years, has died aged 93 in Tasmania, her home for the last 32 years.
The daughter of Col Milo Talbot, who was a younger son of the fourth Baron de Malahide, she was born in England.
On the death of their cousin, her brother became the seventh Baron Talbot de Malahide and he also held the title Hereditary Grand Admiral of Malahide and the Seas Adjoining.
The first Talbot came to Ireland with Strongbow and in 1184 was granted the lordship of Malahide, in return for “one archer with a horse and coat of mail for ever”. The earliest reference that has a drawing of the castle is at the top of a patent dated 1460.
It was attacked by Cromwell after he had besieged Drogheda and the Talbots were banished to Connacht, only returning on the restoration of Charles II.
The then Lady Talbot ordered that all the defences should be demolished so that never again would the castle serve as a stronghold to usurpers.
The present portcullis was added as an embellishment in a later century.
On the morning of the 12th July, 1690, 14 members of the Talbot family breakfasted in the great hall of Malahide, but not one returned from the Battle of the Boyne. (Rose Talbot would sit at dinner beneath the portrait of handsome Dick Talbot, Duke of Tryconnell, whose features were similar to her own, though not his allegiance.)
In the 19th century, the fifth Lord Talbot married the great granddaughter of James Boswell of Aughinleck in Scotland – the biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson.
The contents of the house were transferred to Malahide, including a cabinet with Boswell’s papers and his very racy diaries.
It was one of the most important literary finds of the century, although the fifth baron was initially reluctant for them to be published as he regarded them as of “a rather delicate nature”. Sometime later the box, thought to hold a croquet set, was opened and found instead to contain additional manuscripts.
Rose had lived with her brother at Malahide for some years before moving to Dún Laoghaire.
On her brother’s sudden death in 1973, she inherited the castle, but there were very heavy death duties to pay.
It was offered, with the contents, to the State but was refused because, although the Revenue Commissioners were empowered to accept land in lieu of the death duties, there was no provision for them to take goods and chattels.
In 1976, the castle with the demesne of 268 acres was bought by the State. But the contents were put up for auction and the heirlooms and treasures in the house were dispersed – an irreparable loss to the country of incomparable works of art and artefacts acquired by generations of one family.
When the castle was sold, Rose Talbot moved to Tasmania where, since 1934, the family owned a house called Malahide and 21,000 acres in a place named, oddly enough given the family’s Co Dublin connection, Fingal.
The Fingal land had a 37 kilometre (23 mile) frontage on the river Esk and was the second largest property in Tasmania.
There, Rose proved a model landowner and sheep farmer, successfully managing the Fingal Pastoral Company. Her brother, when he was alive, created the present gardens at Malahide Castle, for which he collected rare plants from across the world.
One of his greatest contributions to botany was to commission a series of books, The Endemic Flora of Tasmania by Dr Winifred Curtis, illustrated by Margaret Stones.
Two volumes were unfinished when he died and their publication was continued by his sister as a memorial to him.
Rose, with the assurance of a patrician and her interest in people, entertained a diverse circle which included writers, horticulturists, architects, lawyers, politicians – she was friendly with Jack Lynch – and those whom she thought amusing, as well as other landowners. For some years she worked as a Samaritan. Her cool, polite voice informing callers that to commit suicide would be “entirely inexcusable”, reduced them to silence, but turned their thoughts away from the final step.
Since moving to Tasmania, she came to Europe every summer and did an Irish peregrination so was able to maintain contact with her friends by whom she is remembered, among other things, for the mouth-watering smoked salmon that she brought to them.
The Hon Rose Maud Talbot: born September 14th, 1915; died February 14th, 2009