Lady Dunsany, widow of the late Lord Dunsany

[Michael Rhodes]

_. Lady Dunsany, who died at Our Lady's Hospital, Navan, from coronavirus Covid-19, 9 April, 2020, was the widow of Lord Dunsany, of Dunsany Castle, Co, Meath, the 20th holder of Ireland's oldest barony.



Maria-Alice Villela de Carvalho, born in Brazil, married firstly, _____ de Marsillac, by whom she had two children, a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Joanna. She married 2ndly, 1982, the Hon Edward John Carlos Plunkett [born 10 Sept, 1939], son and heir of the 19th Baron Dunsany [1906-1999], by his first wife, Mrs Vera Bryce, former wife [1] the Hon Randall Arthur Henry Plunkett, and [2] of John Felix Charles Ivar Bryce [1906-85], and youngest daughter of Colonel Genesio de Sa Sottomaior, of San Paulo, Brazil. She was the mother of two sons from her second marriage, Randal and Oliver.



Her husband, who succeeded his father, 6 Feb, 1999, as 20th Baron Dunsany, a title in the Peerage of Ireland [created in 1461/2], died 24 May, 2011, and was succeeded by his elder son, the Hon Randal Plunkett, 21st Baron [born 9 March, 1983].



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[Michael Rhodes]

EXTRACT

Lady Dunsany, who has died after contracting Covid-19, aged 78, was chatelaine of one of the oldest inhabited houses in Ireland. But she was not a stereotypical grande dame of an ancient Irish castle, a class described by the historian, Mark Bence-Jones, as being “all faded Dior and dogs’ dinners”. Lady Dunsany was Brazilian and idiosyncratic enough to qualify for the greatest Irish honorific – that of being “a real character”.

She was born Maria-Alice Villela de Carvalho in Rio de Janeiro on January 27 1942. Her father, Scipião de Carvalho, was a distinguished architect strongly influenced by the Bauhaus movement.

Her mother, Arminda Bandeira de Villela, came from an ancient Portuguese family who were hereditary standard bearers to the Kings of Portugal and who claimed descent from the explorers Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral, the founder of Brazil. She maintained that her skill as a markswoman was due to this ancestry, and also recalled that her father trained her to use a pistol by having her shoot at cacti.

Not long after her father’s death she married an oncologist, Jayme de Marsillac, with whom she had a son and a daughter. The marriage did not last, but the couple remained good friends.

In New York in the 1980s Maria-Alice met and soon married the glamorous and handsome 20th Lord Dunsany, the Hon Edward Plunkett (known as Eddie). He was then heir to one of the oldest titles in Ireland, the barony of Dunsany, granted to the Plunkett family by Henry VI. His father, Randal Plunkett (the 19th Lord Dunsany), was a lieutenant-colonel in the Indian Cavalry (the Guides) and served with distinction on the North-West Frontier in 1930 and in the Second World War.

After her husband inherited Dunsany Castle on the death of his father in 1999, Maria-Alice, now Lady Dunsany, set about a sympathetic restoration of its interior.

Lady Dunsany rarely left the confines of the demesne walls of the castle, preferring that the outside world should come to her. And it did. She was a gregarious and generous hostess whose table settings were said by Charles Haughey to rival those of the Élysée Palace.

Her burial, in the grounds of the castle, next to her husband, who died in 2011, was attended only by her son Randal, the 21st Lord Dunsany, and a Catholic priest who was a family friend.

She is survived by her three sons and a daughter.

Lady Dunsany, born 27 January 1942, died April 9 2020