Lord Rathcavan
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Lord Rathcavan, adventurous Northern Irish businessman who started Brasserie St Quentin in London
When Princess Margaret asked to see the kitchen, the French chefs froze with wooden spoons and whisks in the ‘present arms’ position
The 3rd Baron Rathcavan, who has died aged 86, was the businessman and restaurateur behind the popular Brasserie St Quentin in Knightsbridge, which he founded with his cousin, the food critic Quentin Crewe.
A scion of one of Northern Ireland’s most prominent political families, Hugh O’Neill (as he was) also served as chairman of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board from 1988 until 1996, at a time when the job used to feature in bad jokes about the least desirable occupation in the world. Undeterred by receiving a live bullet in the post, O’Neill made the most of the ceasefire to steer visitor numbers in the province to pre-1969 levels [….]
By the end of the decade the brasserie had spawned a patisserie, Spécialités St Quentin, to address the deficit of edible croissants and good sandwiches in London; the Grill St Quentin, modelled on La Coupole in Paris; and a cafe. In 1989 the St Quentin group was bought for £2 million by the Savoy group, of which O’Neill became a director.
In 2002, however, with a handful of other peers including the Marquess of Salisbury, he bought the brasserie back, “determined to bring about the renaissance of St Q”. In due course he passed it on to his son François, now a successful restaurateur, and proprietor of Maison François in St James’s [….]
Hugh Detmar Torrens O’Neill was born in London on June 14 1939, the younger of two children and the only son of Major Phelim O’Neill, later Ulster Unionist MP for North Antrim, and his wife Clare (“Bim”), daughter of the Arts and Crafts architect Detmar Blow. The free-thinking Phelim, who always wore an Old Etonian tie but described himself as a “Left-wing conservative”, later defected to the non-sectarian Alliance Party in 1970.
Hughie’s earliest memory was sheltering under a stout kitchen table at the height of the Blitz. After his parents’ very public divorce in 1944, precipitated by a Grenadier Guards colonel known as “Cuckoo” Starkey, he acquired two step-parents “whose influence was entirely baleful”; he and his sister were largely raised by his grandparents at Cleggan, the O’Neills’ estate in Co Antrim. When forced to stay with his mother and “Cuckoo”, he took with him a fistful of earth from Cleggan for morale.
He was devoted to his grandfather, also called Hugh O’Neill, a staunch Orangeman who had served as the first ever speaker of the Stormont Parliament (1921-29), become Father of the House at Westminster, and been created Baron Rathcavan in 1953. In 1922 the IRA had burnt down Shane’s Castle, his childhood home, in the mistaken belief that he was there. Terence O’Neill, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland (1963-1969) and later Lord O’Neill of the Maine, was a nephew [….]
When his grandfather died, aged 99, in 1982, the Cleggan estate passed straight to O’Neill, who proved himself a devoted custodian of both the farming and the forestry. In 1994, on the death of his estranged father, he succeeded as Lord Rathcavan [….]
In 1983 he married Sylvie Chittenden, née Wichard du Perron, a strikingly beautiful Frenchwoman. After his own unsatisfactory childhood, Hugh Rathcavan was at pains to be an ideal stepfather to her twin sons and, later, an affectionate father to his own son François, who succeeds in the barony. His wife, son and stepsons all survive him.
Lord Rathcavan, born June 14 1939, died November 11 2025
Patricia Light
Patricia Light
colinp
colinp
Patricia Light
Paul Theroff
https://www.angelfire.com/realm/gotha/gotha/chichester_oneill.html
This branch became O'Neills when the 1st Lord O'Neill inherited the O’Neill estates on the death of the 3rd Viscount O'Neill in 1855.
