Lily Margaret Graham Gough: Earlscliffe Owner 1949 to 1950
In March 1949, Earlscliffe entered one of the most curious chapters in its history. The house was purchased at auction for £10,100 by Lily Margaret Graham Gough—yet, despite the acquisition, she never lived there. Within little more than a year, the property was placed back on the market.
This brief and unexplained ownership invites a different kind of story. Rather than a settled period of occupation, it offers a glimpse into a life shaped by art, loss, war, and changing circumstances—raising the question not simply of what happened at Earlscliffe, but why it never quite became a home.
Family history
Lily Margaret Graham Parry was born on 10 December 1884 in Cheltenham, England, the daughter of Graham Parry, later associated with Cobham, Virginia, USA. 1
Lady Gregory's book "The Kiltartan Wonder Book". 16 (Select image to enlarge)
She trained at the Slade School of Art in London, where she developed both her artistic skills and her social circle. It was here that she met Robert Gregory, the only son of Sir William and Lady Augusta Gregory of Coole Park, near Gort, County Galway.
Margaret was not simply connected to a celebrated artistic family; she was an artist in her own right. While studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, she entered the same cosmopolitan artistic world as Robert Gregory and many of their later friends. W. B. Yeats initially described her as “pretty, very clever and with beautiful manners”, and Lady Gregory welcomed her warmly into the family. Margaret later illustrated three of her mother-in-law’s books: The Golden Apple, The Kiltartan Wonder Book and The Blessed Trinity. Lady Gregory greatly valued her work.
Lady Augusta Gregory was a central figure in the Irish Literary Revival, co-founding the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre alongside W. B. Yeats and Edward Martyn. 2
Robert's father, Sir William, who was 35 years older than Augusta, died in 1892. On his death, the house and estate at Coole were left to Robert to inherit when he reached the age of 21. However, Robert was not that interested and left the house under his mother's care.
Robert became an accomplished artist and a renowned Irish Cricketer. 5
Marriage to Robert Gregory
Margaret married Robert Gregory on 26 September 1907 in Paddington, London. They had three children: Catherine, Anne, and Richard. As a wedding gift, Lady Gregory gave Robert a house in the Burren, County Clare, called Mount Vernon. 3
Margaret and Robert used to spend their summers at Mount Vernon, often with bohemian artist friends. However, their children chose to summer at Coole with their grandmother, Lady Gregory, whom they all adored.4
Their lives moved between Mount Vernon and Coole Park, where Margaret became part of a wider artistic and intellectual circle. Visitors included William Butler Yeats, whose presence was not always welcomed. Robert, in particular, disliked what he saw as Yeats’s habit of imposing on his mother’s hospitality by staying in the best room in the house and drinking the best wines. Margaret agreed with Robert, resulting in regular arguments with Yeats.
The Affair
In January 1915, Robert told Margaret that he had fallen in love with Nora Summers, a 23-year-old artist whom they had known through Slade School of Fine Art. Nora was married to Gerald Summers, and the two couples had belonged to the same close-knit artistic circle. Margaret had believed herself happily married for seven years. In her private diary, she recorded the shock of Robert’s confession:
Poor Robert, but poor me. Nothing will ever be the same again. Can’t bear it.
Margaret initially made an extraordinary effort to preserve both her marriage and the couples’ friendship. She met the Summerses for dinner in London and helped persuade them to visit Coole Park. After three apparently cordial days, she described them in her diary as “perfect guests”, and the four travelled together to Mount Vernon. The reconciliation collapsed on 16 July, when Margaret discovered Robert and Nora in what she described as a “disgusting scene”. Nora and Gerald moved into a nearby bungalow, but Robert’s infatuation continued.
Margaret’s distress became profound. Her diary reveals that she was sometimes using chloroform to render herself unconscious, while also attempting to talk calmly with Nora and hold her family together. She wrote of feeling strangely fond of Nora despite believing that she had “utterly finished my wonderful dream with Robert”. During the same troubled period, Margaret suffered a miscarriage.
The uneasy arrangement soon collapsed when Margaret discovered Robert and Nora together in compromising circumstances. Although Nora and Gerald moved into a nearby bungalow, Robert remained obsessed with Nora, while Margaret struggled to hold her family together. Tensions intensified through the summer of 1915, culminating in a bitter confrontation involving both couples, during which Robert struck Gerald and the Summerses left for Galway in a damaged motor car.19 20
On 23 August, after another bitter confrontation, Margaret finally confided in Lady Gregory. Her mother-in-law was appalled by Robert’s conduct. Margaret later recorded Lady Gregory saying:
That I should have lived to know my son was a cad.
Margaret nevertheless found herself defending Robert and regretted having disclosed the affair. Soon afterwards, Robert confirmed that he intended to enlist and “get away”.
The Tragedy of the First World War
Against the background of the collapsing marriage and his obsessive attachment to Nora, Robert repeatedly spoke of joining the armed forces as a means of getting away. In September 1915, aged 34, he enlisted in the Connaught Rangers before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps. His personal turmoil may have contributed to the decision, although his motives cannot be reduced to the affair alone.
At his age of 34, and with his family connections, he could have sought an easy commission, but instead chose to join the Connaught Rangers as a second lieutenant in September 1915. He then swiftly moved to the Royal Flying Corps where he showed himself to be an exceptional pilot and was awarded the Military Cross and the Légion d’Honneur for "many acts of conspicuous bravery". 6 24 25
On 23 January 1918, Robert was killed when his aircraft fell from the sky near Padua in Italy. Official Royal Flying Corps records stated that he had been shot down accidentally by an Italian pilot. However, the precise cause remains uncertain. 17
Lady Gregory received the telegram on 1 February 1918 while writing letters in the drawing room at Coole. Shocked and barely able to speak, her immediate concern was to tell Margaret, who was staying with her children at the Galway home of Lady Gregory’s sister, Arabella Waithman, at 36 Dominick Street. Margaret was still recovering from a serious miscarriage the previous Christmas.
Lady Gregory travelled by horse and train to Galway to break the news in person. Margaret was standing on the stairs when she arrived. The moment she saw Lady Gregory, she understood and asked,
He’s dead, isn’t he?
Lady Gregory could not answer. She leant against the wall and slowly sat down on the hall floor, and the two women wept together. 21
The following day, Lady Gregory wrote to W. B. Yeats:
The long dreaded telegram has come - Robert killed in action...It is very hard to bear.
She also asked Yeats to write something in Robert’s memory:
If you feel like it sometime write something down that we may keep - you understood him better than many. 13
W. B. Yeats’s Poems
After Robert’s death, Yeats readily accepted Lady Gregory’s request, but the task was more difficult than it might have appeared. Although he had known Robert for many years, their relationship had become strained. Robert resented Yeats’s prolonged stays at Coole Park and what he regarded as the poet’s intrusion into his family home, a view that Margaret shared.
Yeats also faced a political difficulty. Robert had died while serving in the British armed forces only two years after the Easter Rising and the subsequent executions. To commemorate him simply as an officer of the British Empire might have alienated an Irish audience. Yeats therefore had to find a way of honouring Robert as an artist, sportsman, soldier and Irishman without allowing the politics of the war to overwhelm the individual life he wished to remember.
Shepherd and Goatherd
Yeats began work almost immediately. Within three weeks he had drafted Shepherd and Goatherd, an elaborate pastoral lament in which two rural figures mourn Robert’s death. The poem was intended to console Lady Gregory, but it is generally considered less successful than the poems that followed. Its formal language and classical structure can feel strained beside the raw grief that prompted it.
In Memory of Major Robert Gregory
Yeats found a surer voice in In Memory of Major Robert Gregory. Rather than presenting Robert only as a soldier, he commemorated the many sides of his character: artist, horseman, scholar, sportsman and airman. The poem places him among Yeats’s other lost friends and portrays him as someone whose varied talents and intense energy set him apart from more ordinary lives.
Lady Gregory now had the personal memorial she had requested. Yet writing it appears to have released something further in Yeats. His thoughts returned not only to Robert’s death but also to a disturbing dream Robert had described to him in September 1915, shortly before enlisting. In the dream, Robert saw an aeroplane falling beyond trees and a wall. A cousin later described an almost identical dream. Yeats recorded the episode in his occult diary and appears to have remembered it while developing his next and most celebrated poem.
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
In An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, Yeats transformed “Major Robert Gregory” into an unnamed Irish airman. The poem removes him from conventional ideas of military patriotism, duty or hatred of the enemy. Instead, the airman is driven by “a lonely impulse of delight”, suggesting an intensely personal attraction to flight, danger and freedom.
Yeats also returns the airman symbolically to Kiltartan, the landscape and people surrounding Coole Park. Robert is no longer defined primarily by the uniform he wore or the empire for which he fought. He belongs instead to his own locality, to the people who knew him, and to the home his mother had preserved for him.
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
W. B. Yeats, 1918
Reprisals
Yeats returned to Robert’s memory in November 1920, during the increasingly violent War of Independence. In Reprisals, he imagines Robert rising from his grave in Italy to witness the actions of Crown forces around Kiltartan, including violence against the local people associated with his family’s estate.
The poem was much more openly political than the earlier elegies. Lady Gregory disliked it and asked Yeats not to publish it, perhaps because it used her son’s memory to condemn the forces in which he had served. Yeats respected her wishes, and the poem remained unpublished until 1948, after both Lady Gregory and Yeats had died.
Together, the poems helped shape Robert Gregory’s public memory. They preserved him not simply as a wartime casualty, but as a gifted and complex figure connected to the artistic life of Coole, the landscape of Kiltartan and the family whose grief inspired Yeats to write.
Life at Coole in 1920s Ireland
In his will, Robert left everything he owned to his wife, Margaret, who remained on at Coole. However, Margaret's time there was not happy, and with the rise of the War of Independence in Ireland, she wondered whether the country was no longer a safe place to bring up her three children.
Ballyturin Ambush
On 15 May 1921, Margaret accepted a lift from District Inspector Cecil Blake after a tennis gathering at Ballyturin House near Gort. As the car reached the gate, an IRA ambush party opened fire. Blake, his companion Eliza Williams and two British officers were killed. Margaret was the sole survivor and stepped from the vehicle in full view of the gunmen but was not fired upon. One of the attackers helped her to her feet. Her first question was whether Mrs Blake was safe. Margaret was then led back along the avenue and placed in the care of May Bagot. 22 23
During the subsequent inquiry and questioning, Margaret said that she could identify none of the ambushers. 9 10
Sale of Coole
Robert’s death had left Margaret unhappy and increasingly isolated at Coole. As violence intensified during the War of Independence, she became deeply concerned for the safety of her children and considered leaving Ireland. The Ballyturin ambush, in which she watched four companions being killed and narrowly escaped death herself, became the final catalyst. Coole was subsequently sold to the Department of Forestry, subject to an arrangement allowing Lady Gregory to remain there for the rest of her life. 4
Margaret and Yeats at the end of Coole
Margaret’s relationship with Yeats had often been difficult. She resented his prolonged stays at Coole and his dependence on Lady Gregory’s hospitality, and the two sometimes quarrelled openly. Yet their relationship softened towards the end of Lady Gregory’s life. Margaret encouraged Yeats to visit her failing mother-in-law, and after Lady Gregory’s death in May 1932 she recognised that he, too, had lost a home. Without being asked, she unlocked the upstairs room in which he had once slept and written, allowing him to sit there and look out over the woods and lake for the last time. Yeats later remembered that, although they had not always been friends, Margaret was kind to him that day.
Marriage to Vincent Hugh Gough
Despite her misgivings about living in Ireland at the time, Margaret did not leave the country, and eventually married for a second time on 8th Sept 1928 to Major Guy Vincent Hugh Gough, a neighbour of hers, who lived in Lough Cutra castle in Gort, County Galway. 4
Gough was the son of Colonel Hon. George Hugh Gough and Hilda Eve Moffatt.
In the 1920s, the Gough family had moved out of the castle as it had become too expensive to run, and relocated into converted stables on the castle grounds.
However, when Margaret married Guy Vincent Hugh Gough in 1928, they moved into Lough Cutra castle.
Purchase of Earlscliffe
Twenty years later, in March 1949, whilst now living in England but still using Lough Cutra as her Irish residential address, Margaret bought Earlscliffe at auction from Norah and William Martin Murphy for £10,100. 11
However, after purchasing Earlscliffe, Margaret never moved in, 12 and instead put it straight up for sale later in September 1949.
Why buy Earlscliffe?
It is not known why Margaret chose to buy Earlscliffe, but there was an intriguing, if probably coincidental, family connection. Her second husband, Major Guy Vincent Hugh Gough, was a great-great-grandson of Letitia Bunbury, who belonged to the same extended Bunbury family as William Bunbury McClintock Bunbury, the owner of Earlscliffe from 1864. There is no evidence that this connection influenced Margaret’s purchase, or even that she was aware of it, but it creates an unexpected link between two otherwise separate periods in the history of the house.
Several other plausible explanations can be considered based on Margaret’s circumstances at the time.
- A transitional Irish base: At the time of purchase, Margaret was likely living in Surrey with Major Guy Gough, while her previous Irish residence, Lough Cutra Castle, had been vacant and was in the process of being sold. 15 Earlscliffe may have been intended as a smaller, more manageable base in Ireland, perhaps as a seasonal or occasional residence once the castle was no longer available.
- An investment opportunity: In the years following the Second World War, property ownership in Ireland was undergoing change. For someone with financial means and cross-channel connections, acquiring a substantial coastal property near Dublin may have appeared a sound investment, regardless of whether it was intended for occupation.
- Social or family intentions: Margaret’s life was closely tied to Ireland through family, friendships, and artistic networks. Earlscliffe may have been purchased with the intention of hosting visitors, maintaining social ties, or creating a retreat for occasional use—plans that may later have proved impractical or unnecessary.
- Artistic and aesthetic appeal: As a trained artist, Margaret may have been drawn to Earlscliffe’s dramatic setting overlooking Dublin Bay. The house and its surroundings would have offered both inspiration and retreat, aligning with her earlier artistic life, even if that intention was never realised.
- A decision reconsidered: The speed with which the house was placed back on the market—within months of purchase—suggests that the decision may simply have been reassessed. Practical, financial, or personal factors may have made continued ownership undesirable.
Whatever the original motive, the outcome is clear. Earlscliffe never became part of Margaret’s lived experience. Her connection to the house remained brief and indirect—less a chapter of residence than a passing intersection of circumstance, leaving behind more questions than answers.
Life after Earlscliffe
The house didn't sell until May 1950, when it was bought by Brigadier Arthur Christopher Lancelot ("Kit") Stanley-Clarke for his wife Olive.12
Lough Cutra castle was subsequently purchased in late 1952 by Michael Russell from Scotland. 14
Margaret and Guy continued to live in England. Guy died on March 26th, 1959. Margaret lived for another 20 years, dying in Exeter, Devonshire, England on November 27, 1979, aged 94. 4
Next chapter: Olive & Kit Stanley Clarke
Earlscliffe timeline
- 1845–1864: Cornelius Egan
- 1864–1878: Captain William Bunbury McClintock
- 1878–1896: The Knox family
- 1896–1901: John Randal Plunkett
- 1901–1922: Sir John Pentland Mahaffy
- 1922–1924: Very Rev. Charles Thomas Ovenden
- 1924–1927: Robert Rooney
- 1927–1930: Dr Ella Webb
- 1930–1945: Sir John Lumsden
- 1945–1949: William Martin Murphy
- 1949–1950: Lily Margaret Graham Gough
- 1950–1952: Olive & "Kit" Stanley-Clarke
- 1952–1961: Peggy & Bobby Woods
- 1961–1969: Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Knowles
- 1969–today: Robinson & Foley family
References & Further Reading
- The Peerage website https://www.thepeerage.com/p47307.htm ↩
- As an aside, Mahaffy was a supporter of Lady Gregory's work. In Stanford and McDowell's book on Mahaffy, they mention that he sent a subscription to the Irish National Theatre, with a personal note to Lady Gregory. John Pentland Mahaffy: Biography of an Anglo-Irishman, W B Stanford and R B McDowell, Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1971, ISBN 0 7100 6880 8 ↩
- History of Mount Vernon Guest House, Co Clare, Ireland, accessed 2nd July 2026↩
- Mrs Margaret Gregory, accessed 2nd July 2026 and "The Lady who sold Coole Park, by Ronnie O'Gorman, Galway Advertiser, Oct 25, 2012 https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/56079/the-lady-who-sold-coole-park accessed 2nd July 2026. ↩
- ESPN cricinfo, accessed 2nd July 2026 ↩
- "Harrow memorials of the great war : August 23rd, 1914, to March 20th, 1915" as seen at https://www.archive.org/stream/harrowmemorialso05warn/harrowmemorialso05warn_djvu.txt , accessed 2nd July 2026 ↩
- "Representing the Great War: Texts and Contexts", The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th edition, accessed 2nd July 2026.↩
- Poem "Robert In Memory of Major Robert Gregory", accessed 2nd July 2026↩
- "Ballyturin (or Ballyturin) Ambush, Gort, Galway", 2nd July 2026↩
- "An account of the ambush at Ballyturin House, 1921", accessed 2nd July 2026↩
- Irish Times, March 16 1949 pg 4, plus copy of deeds currently in the possession of Karen Foley↩
- As told by Olive Stanley Clarke to David Robinson in the 1980s.↩
- "An Irish Airman" by Ronnie O'Gorman Feb 15th 2018 https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/98640/an-irish-airman accessed 2nd July 2026 and Yeats’s ‘perfect man’ by James Pethica https://thedublinreview.com/article/yeatss-perfect-man/ accessed 2nd July 2026 ↩
- "The Chequered History of Lough Cutra", Connacht Tribune 15th November 1952 page 5.↩
- "Future of Gort ancestral home", Irish Times, 5th November 1952 page 3.↩
- In 1910, Margaret did a series of illustrations for Lady Gregory's book "The Kiltartan Wonder Book". In Judith Hill's biography, "Lady Gregory: An Irish Life", they were described as 'very charming' by Lady Gregory.↩
- Official Royal Flying Corps records stated that he had been shot down accidentally by an Italian pilot. This account has since been challenged by aviation specialist and Gregory family descendant Geoffrey O’Byrne White, who argued that Gregory may have fainted after receiving an influenza inoculation earlier that day and lost control of his aircraft. Lady Gregory also wrote shortly after his death that he was believed to have fainted at a great height, although the exact cause of the crash remains uncertain. As reported in "Challenge to official accounts of Gregory death in WWI", by Ray Burke, 6 Jan 2018. https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2018/0102/930446-robert-gregory/ accessed 2nd July 2026. ↩
- Lady Gregory - Yeats Autumn Gathering. https://autumngathering.com/ accessed 21st July 2026. ↩
- "Robert Gregory and Nora Summers fall in love", - Galway Advertiser https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/97996/robert-gregory-and-nora-summers-fall-in-love accessed 21st July 2026. ↩
- "The end of the affair", - Galway Advertiser https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/98123/the-end-of-the-affair accessed 21st July 2026. ↩
- "'Oh what a happy world it might be with you back and the war at an end'", - Galway Advertiser https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/98421/oh-what-a-happy-world-it-might-be-with-you-back-and-the-war-at-an-end accessed 21st July 2026. ↩
- "Grandson returns to scene of assassinated RIC inspector", - Galway Advertiser https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/55696/grandson-returns-to-scene-of-assassinated-ric-inspector accessed 21st July 2026. ↩
- "Burnings and panic follow Ballyturn ambush", - Galway Advertiser https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/55879/burnings-and-panic-follow-ballyturn-ambush accessed 21st July 2026. ↩
- "Why did Robert Gregory reach for the sky?", - Galway Advertiser https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/97845/why-did-robert-gregory-reach-for-the-sky accessed 21st July 2026. ↩
- "Robert Gregory’s ‘happiest days of his life’", - Galway Advertiser https://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/98279/robert-gregorys-happiest-days-of-his-life accessed 21st July 2026. ↩
Page last updated: 4 Aug 2026