INCHIQUIN, 18th Lord (1943-2023)
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Source: Irish Times, 6 June 2023
https://www.angelfire.com/realm/gotha/gotha/obrien.html
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BREMENMURRAY
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The 18th Lord Inchiquin, descendant of Irish High King Brian Boru and clan chieftain – obituary
He worked to maintain his family’s link with its historic estates in Co Clare and led the first O’Brien clan gathering in 400 years
Conor O’Brien, 18th Baron Inchiquin, who has died aged 79, was a direct descendant of Brian Boru, the 11th-century High King of Ireland, and the only man to hold both an Irish peerage and an Irish chieftaincy; he devoted much of his life to maintaining the family link with its estates in Co Clare.
Conor Myles John O’Brien was born in Surrey on July 17 1943, the son of Fionn O’Brien, third and youngest son of the 15th Baron Inchiquin and Josephine, née Bembaron, and brought up at the family seat of Dromoland Castle, Co Clare, a huge castellated and turreted pile built in the 18th-19th centuries.
The 36ft-long pedigree of the Dromoland O’Briens is reportedly kept in a vault at Lloyds in London, and Conor could trace his ancestry back 32 generations in a direct male line to Brian Boru, King of Thomond before he united the country and became High King in 1002. On Good Friday, 1014, he famously drove the Danes from Dublin at the Battle of Clontarf, only to be slain in his tent the same evening by an enemy soldier as he gave thanks to God for his victory.
After the Reformation, under the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, Henry VIII of England was created King of Ireland by the Parliament of Ireland. In consequence, all Irish monarchs and clan chiefs were ordered to surrender their native titles. Murrough O’Brien, King of Thomond, submitted in 1543 and in return was granted two titles, Earl of Thomond and Baron Inchiquin. Various other titles were conferred on his descendants over the intervening centuries.
Another notable ancestor was Maire Rua (“Red Mary”), a strong-willed woman who once punished an errant housemaid by throwing her out of a window on to a passing pig. She survived; the pig did not. During the Irish Eleven Years’ War of 1641-53, Maire and her husband Conor O’Brien backed the Royalist cause against Cromwell, but after Conor was killed in battle in 1651 she married a Cromwellian officer, thus saving the family estates.
Her descendant put the family’s survival over 1,000 turbulent years down to “ good luck, fighting on the right side at the right time, sitting on the fence at the right time, knowing the right people and marrying the right people”….
After leaving the Army in 1975 in the rank of captain, O’Brien ran his own trading company in the Far East and worked in financial services in Hong Kong.
On the death of his grandfather, the 15th Lord Inchiquin, in 1929, the title had passed to his father’s oldest brother, Sir Donough O’Brien. When he died in 1968 with no direct male heir, the title passed to his uncle Phaedrig who, though married, had no children. When he died in May 1982, Conor inherited as the 18th Baron of Inchiquin (along with the title of prince of Thomond, and 10th baronet of Lemeneagh), his father having died in 1977.
He returned to live in Ireland, but not to Dromoland Castle, which had been sold in 1962 by the 16th Baron Inchiquin to an American businessman who turned it into a luxury five-star hotel. Instead he moved into Thomond House, a Georgian-style manor 200 yards from the castle which the 16th Baron built after selling the castle and furnished with family antiques.
From 1984 (and from 1988 with his wife Helen) Lord Inchiquin ran Thomond House as an exclusive guest house to take overflow from Dromoland Castle. He still owned a sizeable residual estate, part of which he farmed and part of which he ran as a sporting and leisure venue.
As chief of the clan, he kept in touch with O’Briens (estimated at 750,000 worldwide) via the internet and established the O’Brien Clan Association, which held it first Clan Gathering for 400 years in 1992. He also formed the O’Brien Clan Foundation, a worldwide concern launched in the US in 1998 with a focus on charitable causes, arts and culture. It would, he suggested, operate rather like the Rotary clubs, “with little chapters of O’Briens all over the world.”…..
In 1988 Lord Inchiquin married Helen O’Farrell, who survives him with two daughters. The title passes to a cousin, also Conor O’Brien.
The 18th Baron Inchiquin, born July 17 1943, died June 3 2023
