Hon Juliana Roberts: The Hon Juliana Roberts, who died last month aged 77 , following a car accident, was a remarkable woman, an aristocrat and a dynamic force in the hotel sector in her adopted home of Dromineer, Co Tipperary, on the banks of the River Shannon. She married four times and gave birth to seven children, two of whom predeceased her. She outlived all her husbands.
She was not a person to be trifled with. Her tussles with the Garda over "after-hours" drinking in her hotel were legendary. She challenged a superintendent to tell her when he was holding a party to open the new Garda station. "I intend to gatecrash it," she explained, "just as you gatecrashed many of mine." A local tax inspector did not hide his relief when a tax amnesty finally ended bloody battles with Juliana.
The third daughter of the second Viscount Scarsdale and his first wife Mildred Carson Dunbar, Juliana was brought up in the family seat at Kedleston, Derbyshire, an imposing stately home, reckoned to be Robert Adam's finest and now in the care of the National Trust.
The Curzons have been at Kedleston since the 12th century, having come over with William the Conqueror from Normandy. Juliana's granduncle Lord Curzon was viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 at the height of the British Raj. He was mocked in a piece of doggerel, composed, it is said, by a friend:
My name is George Nathaniel Curzon
I am a most superior person.
My cheeks are pink, my hair is sleek,
I dine at Blenheim twice a week.
He became a representative peer for Ireland, served in Lloyd George's war cabinet and opposed giving women the vote. Juliana was born three years after he died, so a clash of epic proportions was avoided.
Juliana attended Heathfield school at Ascot, for the daughters of gentlemen. (Her daughters later followed her. Her elder son went to Eton.) A spell in a finishing school polished her cooking skills. But much education came from her father who, having no sons, made sure his girls got a good grounding in the essentials of English country life, hunting, shooting and fishing.
Contemporary photographs show a poised and beautiful young woman. Barely out of school, she married George Derek Stanley-Smith, a "Lloyds Name", and in 1948 gave birth to her first child, a daughter Charlotte, who died of meningitis within a year. She had two further children by her first husband, Venetia (1950) and Charles (1952). They lived in London, but the marriage did not last.
Her next marriage was to Frederick Nettlefold, a member of the Courtaulds fabrics dynasty. They lived in splendour on his estates in Gloucestershire and Kenya. Juliana bore another daughter Caroline (1954), who is married to Viscount Windsor. (These Windsors are the genuine article, unlike the British royals who adopted the name.) This marriage did not last either and Juliana and Frederick divorced in 1956.
Now in her 30s, and with three children, Juliana was far from finished with marriage. Next was Sir Dudley Cunliffe-Owen, who had served in the royal navy with Derek Stanley-Smith. He had attended at least one of her previous weddings.
His father owned Sunningdale Park, in Berkshire, later the venue for an abortive settlement of the Northern Ireland problem. With Dudley she had another daughter, Juliana (1957), known as Juliet. They lived in Dorset, Spain near Sitges and in Jersey, and sailed six months of the year. Once Juliana fell overboard into the Seine from his yacht.
Dudley was a sportsman, president and veteran of the celebrated St Moritz Tobogganing Club, the Cresta Run, where there is a turn named after Curzon.
Her final husband was John Roberts. They lived in Jersey where John was a Seigneur (as in droit de seigneur, but the practice had ceased). With him she had two children, Lucinda (Lulu) (1963) and Jamie (1964), who died tragically in a fall at university in 1986. When this marriage ended in the late 1960s, Juliana went to London for almost a year.
Hunting, shooting, fishing and sailing holidays had often brought her to Ireland. In 1969 she moved to Dromineer near Lough Derg. This appears to have been prompted by Col Dene, master of the North Tipp Hunt, who had been stationed at Kedleston during the war. She bought the Sail Inn and set about marketing it overseas, first in Britain, then France, as a centre for excellent food, and a base for outdoor pursuits.
Her flair for decor and flower arranging came to the fore. She hunted with the Ormonds and the North Tipp hunts. Horse racing was a passion and she had some success as an owner with Shannon Princess.
She remained active in the hotel until 1986. A subsequent short-lived retirement ended when she opened a flower shop in Nenagh. The phrase "family flowers only" in death notices enraged her, as it was bad for business. It did not appear in her own death notice.
"She was great at getting things started, perhaps not so good at keeping them going," a family member remarked. He was talking about her business skills, but he might have included her marriages. In her last years her cherished companions were a Laois man, Colm Delaney, and her Jack Russell dog Neddie. She read the Racing Post every day, and Ladbroke's betting shop was a home from home.
When she died aged 77, friends and former employees came from all over to pay warm tribute to a spirited woman many knew as "Lady Juliana".
Dromineer's reputation as an internationally-known centre of sailing tourism owes much to her energy. As her death notice said, hers was "a life lived to the full".
She is survived by her son Charles Stanley-Smith, daughters Venetia Kajiyama, Caroline Windsor, Juliana Markeson and Lulu Roberts, and her sisters Anne Willson and Diana Curzon.
Juliana Roberts (née Curzon): born August 4th, 1928; died July 16th, 2006