Lady St Levan, 69, wife of the 4th Lord St Levan, of St Michael's Mount
Michael Rhodes
was the wife of the 4th Lord St Levan, of the magnificent St Michael's
Mount, Marazion, Cornwall.
Lady St Levan, a charity worker & Cordon Bleu cook, had been
chatelaine of St Michael's Mount since her husband succeeded to the
family peerage -and became custodian of the family home - in 1978.
The family of Lord St Levan have been seated at St Michael's Mount
since 1659. It stands in splendour a quarter of a mile off the beach
at Marazion. For about 20 days a year the house [National Trust
property since 1954] is cut off from the mainland - it is linked by a
causeway.
At the time of Alexander the Great the Mount was known to the ancient
Greeks as Ictis, and Cornish tin was sent from here to the Greek
trading cities in the Mediterranean. Early Celtic saints visited the
Mount and the Archangel St Michael visited the place -or so legend has
it. A Benedictine Abbey was established on the Mount in the 12th
century and became a place of pilgrimage.
St Michael's Mount was considerably knocked about by Henry VIII at the
dissolution of the monasteries, and had a succession of governors, and
the old abbey and fortress slowly developed a more residential
character.
The house's extensive renovations were mostly the work of an amateur
architect James Piers St Aubyn, a bachelor and habitue of the
gentlemen's clubs of St James's - and he built a house with very few
double bedrooms.
Susan St Levan was born Susan Kennedy - an army child - daughter of
Sir John Kennedy, a Major-General and Governor of Southern Rhodesia -
and she grew up overseas. Her mother was a Joicey-Cecil descended from
the Marquesses of Exeter.
Later in London she took some Cordon Bleu cookery lessons & then went
on a local authority cookery course.
In 1970 she married the Hon John St Aubyn, who, in 1978, succeeded his
father as 4th Baron. Before inheriting the Mount he too had had a
varied career, including a spell in catering. He opened a shop in
London's Earls Court Road, selling meat pies to Australians.
For a quarter of a century Susan St Levan helped her husband run St
Michael's Mount. In the 1980s and 90s their home had upward of 600,000
visitors a year.
Lady St Levan was President of the Friends of the International
Musicians Seminar, which brought world-class musical performance and
teaching to Cornwall.
She also compiled a book of Cornish recipes to raise money for St
Julia's Hospice at nearby Hayle.
She is survived by her husband, who was 84 on Sunday. There were no
children of the union.
The funeral takes place at All Saints Church, Marazion, Cornwall, 1
March, 2003, followed by a Memorial Service at St Mary's, Penzance, at
a later date.
--
Michael Rhodes.