Carina The Marchioness Conyngham of Slane Castle is turning HQ into a hotbed of sustainable activity and enterprise …
Image; Blue herringbone tweed coat, The Landskein. White shirt with pussy bow, COS. Dark wash jeggings, Marks & Spencer. Wellington boots, Carina’s own.
Carina The Marchioness Conyngham of Slane Castle greets me warmly in the courtyard of the Castle. Dressed in jeans and a green jumper, tall and graceful, she is beautiful, but also has the appearance of a hardworking, practical person. Married to Alex, now the 8th Marquess Conyngham, since 2002, she has no airs and graces about her title. “At a personal level, it is not a title I use every day in Ireland. People are down to earth here. But the title is of great interest to people outside Ireland. We have to compete on a world level to attract people here to Slane Castle, so if we have to use it, I am happy to do so,” she says, adding with a smile: “I’m not sure if it means much to people in Dublin.” With that cleared up, I call her Carina thereafter.
Blue handknit sweater, Colin Burke at Havana. Styled by Corina Gaffey, assisted by Caitriona McGovern and Ruth Douglas. Make-up by Michelle Regazolli Stone. Hair by Julie Harding.
We take several flights of narrow stone stairs to reach the apartment which she, Alex, and their three children inhabit in a restored wing of the 18thcentury castle – a vast circular space that combines living room, dining room, kitchen and general purpose area dominated by a vaulted dome and three magnificent floor-to-ceiling quatrefoil windows with views overlooking the Boyne. “Not your average apartment,” she says, explaining that they moved in when they took on the running of Slane Castle in September 2020. The space will eventually be converted into a three-bedroom apartment to let, and Carina and her family will relocate to Beauparc House, owned by the Conyngham family since 1986 and to where Alex’s late father, Henry Mount Charles, moved after the disastrous fire that swept the Castle in 1991.
Carina remembers vividly her first visit to Slane two years after the fire, on foot of an invitation from Lady Henrietta Conyngham, Alex’s sister, to the Pearl Jam concert. “I remember coming up the steps to the Castle door, looking in through the windows and seeing the sky above and thinking, this couldn’t be rebuilt. But it was.”
The ballroom at Slane was commissioned for the birthday of King George IV in 1821. It is said the remarkably straight road from Dublin to Slane was designed to expedite the King’s journey to visit his confidante Elizabeth Conyngham, wife of the 1st Marquess Conyngham.
The Great Hall.
Carina remembers vividly her first visit to Slane two years after the fire, on foot of an invitation from Lady Henrietta Conyngham, Alex’s sister, to the Pearl Jam concert. “I remember coming up the steps to the Castle door, looking in through the windows and seeing the sky above and thinking, this couldn’t be rebuilt. But it was.”
From a prominent English banking family, Carina, now 50, grew up in a vicarage in Wiltshire, but spent Easter holidays every year in Roaringwater Bay in Cork where her father Nicholas Bolton, who loved Ireland, acquired an oyster farm after a meeting in London with the owner of a fishery there. “I remember those holidays in Cork, being out in the driving rain, so I can never say that I didn’t know what I was getting into here,” she laughs.
Her initial ambition was to be a journalist, but this idea was discouraged by her mother, Lavinia Bolton, legendary locations editor and features writer at House & Garden magazine. “She discouraged me because journalism didn’t pay so, having studied Spanish and Portuguese, I went to work as a fund manager at Bloomberg in the City of London.” After that, Carina became a qualified energy manager with a Masters of Science in Environmental Technologies from Imperial College London. At one point, she also worked for a catering company in London run by ex-army lieutenant colonels, a learning experience she was later to apply to event management in Slane: “I get a kick from making people happy,” she says.
Carina and Alex Conyngham in the ballroom. Carina wears a dress by New Day Originals, a sustainable fashion label by Finula Crowe.
She first met Alex Conyngham as a teenager at the Feathers Ball in London – a society rite of passage charity event – and the pair began a correspondence. Though the romance petered out, they remained friends and reestablished a relationship in the 1990s, became engaged in January 2001, and married a year later, their lives gradually becoming more embedded in the Castle and estate, Carina and Alex learning about permaculture and organic farming, working hard to reinvigorate Rock Farm with Tamworth pigs, Dexter cattle, and a market garden.
That partnership underpinned the challenge of rebuilding the business after the pandemic. “We wanted to kickstart a new programme.” The first thing they did was to open a glamping site and The Lime House, a straw bale ecolodge for short-term lets at Rock Farm. In 2021, having opened an outdoor dining space in the Castle courtyard and a tented cocktail bar overlooking the Boyne, Carina and Alex won the Movers & Shakers Award for progressive food and hospitality. “We got together a talented team of young chefs who couldn’t work because of Covid, and we had a wonderful summer.”
The Dining Room.
Slane Castle is a strongly commercial but sustainable enterprise in which Carina and Alex cater for everything, from small events to vast concerts, and everything in between. “The Castle is getting busier and busier. It needs to be busy because it is an expensive property to run,” she says, adding that exclusive Castle hire and other accommodation on Rock Farm is working very well.
Hosting events and celebrations is the most profitable area of the business. Last year, they hosted 15 weddings in the Castle and twelve at Rock Farm. An audience of 80,000 attend Slane’s annual rock concerts; the next one is American singer Luke Combs, in July. The Traitors will film there again this year, the crew and participants in situ for a month. Last year Carina and Alex launched CAIM, a new art programme focused on nature and sanctuary. There is also the award-winning Slane Irish Whiskey Distillery, founded in 2008; the whiskey is made with spring barley grown on the farm.
The Hunting Room, Alex’s childhood bedroom.
Last year, they hosted 15 weddings in the Castle and twelve at Rock Farm. An audience of 80,000 attend Slane’s annual rock concerts; the next one is American singer Luke Combs, in July. The Traitors will film there again this year, the crew and participants in situ for a month. Last year Carina and Alex launched CAIM, a new art programme focused on nature and sanctuary. There is also the award-winning Slane Irish Whiskey Distillery, founded in 2008; the whiskey is made with spring barley grown on the farm.
Carina is photographed in the Drawing Room, wearing a dress by New Day Originals, as before.
The couple have three children. The eldest, their daughter Laragh, has Rett Syndrome, a rare genetic neurodevelopment disorder which means she needs special care. “Laragh is 17 now and, though hers was a normal birth, I could see around five or six, she wasn’t meeting her milestones. She has a mild variation of Rett and can walk and talk – many are in wheelchairs. There is no cure, no medication, for alleviating the symptoms. You can look at it as a burden, but Laragh is a gift. She’s sweet and high-spirited, always in a great mood and loves music.” Carina and Alex also have two rugby-mad sons, Rory, 16, and Casper, 14. For relaxation, Carina, a keen surfer, loves to be beside the sea in Donegal, Mayo, or Easkey in Sligo.
Hardworking, resourceful and committed, Carina admits that having a unique historic property to maintain and protect has its challenges. “You learn by doing, whether running the farm or the business. But it’s about sharing and nurturing, and making sure we leave Slane Castle better than we found it.”
