Less than two months after leaving the country which had been her home for half a century, Sheila, Dowager Lady Dunsany died in an English nursing home. During her long time in Ireland, she had been an indefatigable worker for many charities, although much of what she and her husband achieved went, by their own choice, publicly unacknowledged. More widely known and appreciated was the flair and enthusiasm she brought to the role of chatelaine at Dunsany castle, Co Meath where during the 1950s and 1960s she entertained in a style which has now vanished entirely.
Lady Dunsany was born in London on August 7th, 1912, the only daughter of Sir Henry Philips whose family home for many centuries had been Picton castle in Pembrokeshire. After school, she studied art history in Brussels and Florence; she retained her interest in this discipline throughout her life and was a noted connoisseur collecting works by Jack Yeats and Roderic O'Conor among many others. Friendship with Welsh artist Graham Sutherland encouraged her to develop an interest in contemporary art and among the many Irish organisations with which she became associated was the Friends of the National Collections, acting as its President for a period. Her granddaughter recently remembered Lady Dunsany providing financial help for the painter Daniel O'Neill when she discovered he had no money. In 1990, a number of pictures were stolen from Dunsany castle in a £1 million robbery. They were subsequently recovered.
At the age of 20, she married Major J.F. Foley, Baron de Rutzen with whom she had a daughter, Victoria; her husband was subsequently killed while serving with the British army in Italy in 1944. Three years later, she married Lieut Col Randall Plunkett, heir to the Dunsany title and together they moved into Dunsany castle in 1949 when his father handed over the property to the couple.
On settling in Ireland, Lady Dunsany (as she became in 1957 when the 18th lord died) became actively involved with a wide variety of charitable organisations. Among these was the Civics Institute, founded at the beginning of the century by the philanthropist and vicereine, Lady Aberdeen to provide assistance for the socially deprived. Friends recall how Lady Dunsany would regularly drive from Co Meath into the centre of Dublin, park her car in what were perceived to be dangerous areas and then visit youth clubs where she would encourage teenagers to develop their artistic skills. In addition, she was founder and first chairwoman of the Meath branch of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, hosting an annual ball in Dunsany castle to raise funds for the charity. She was involved with the ICA, a member of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and of the Order of St Lazarus, a leprosy charity of which her husband was Irish Grand Bailiff. It was while driving to Belfast in 1995 to receive funds for an eye clinic in Gaza that she was involved in a serious car accident from which she never fully recovered.
Lady Dunsany was also closely associated with the early success of Irish fashion designer Sybil Connolly whose career she did much to promote. The two women first met in 1951 when Lady Dunsany visited Richard Alan's shop on Grafton Street, Dublin - where Sybil Connolly then worked as manager - looking for a black dress. "I didn't like anything except the one Sybil was wearing, which she had designed herself," she told The Irish Times earlier this year.
Having persuaded the fledgling designer to make clothes for her, Lady Dunsany wore these in the United States where they attracted widespread attention, not least from Carmel Snow, Dublin-born editor of Harper's Bazaar and, at the time, the most influential woman in fashion worldwide. When Snow brought a group of American journalists and department store buyers to Ireland in July 1953, Dunsany castle was the venue for a Sybil Connolly fashion show which led to a flood of orders for the designer. Dunsany castle was also used for several fashion shoots during this period, including a set of pictures taken by photographer Richard Dormer, and used to accompany a story on Sybil Connolly in Life magazine.
Lady Dunsany never lost her interest in fashion and continued to wear clothes by Irish designers to the end of her life; one of the items still in her wardrobe was a skirt made by Irene Gilbert in 1949. Nor, despite the obvious suffering caused by her accident in 1995 and the death of her husband earlier this year, did she ever succumb to self-pity. She is survived by a daughter Beatrice Plunkett from her second marriage and by a number of grandchildren from her first.
Sheila, Dowager Lady Dunsany: born 1912; died July, 1999