Slane’s Gerry Hand gives his perspective of the late Henry Mount Charles. He grew up in the village and witnessed how the man brought Slane to the international stage and how he was respected and at times the locals supported him or challenged him. Either way he was always true to his beloved Slane.
It is widely accepted that you have reached a certain level of fame if people only need to use your first name to identify you. Take Bono, Micko and PaÃdi as examples. Growing up in Slane during the eighties if someone mentioned Henry, it was understood they were talking about Henry Mountcharles from the castle.
Henry divided opinion locally as a certain coterie saw him as a symbol of British rule in Ireland while the more level headed among us saw him as a good provider of employment and someone who looked after the community as best he could. My mother wouldn’t have a bad word said against him. Henry himself never courted popularity but achieved it when he opened a nightclub in the castle basement in 1981, a time when tensions were high over the hunger strikes in the Maze that saw ten men allowed to die by an intransigent UK prime minister. He wasn’t as popular as he believed though.
Most Saturday nights he could be found in one of the local pubs where inevitably he was automatically added to a round when drinks were bought. This wasn’t an indicator that he was loved there was a more prosaic reason, we knew if we got him in good spirits, he’d keep the bar in the night club open until dawn.
The history of the concerts at the castle is well documented and the early events were promoted by Jim Aiken a man from South Armagh whose background would have been the polar opposite of Henrys. Prior to the Springsteen concert in 1985 Henry told Aiken that he was about to celebrate the fact that the castle was 200 years old and enquired what should he do to celebrate. Aiken’s answer, ‘Give it back to them that rightly own it’ summed up the difference in upbringing perfectly.
One event which Henry struggled to come to terms with was the 1989 killing of castle gamekeeper Timmy Kidman for which two Drogheda men were convicted of manslaughter, Henry always felt they should have gone down for murder. He handled the fallout from the riots the night before the Bob Dylan concert in 1984 quite well and rebuffed some local hostility to the staging of any more shows with dignity.
The castle was the centre of local activity on 15th of August each year when the annual sportsday took place on the front lawn as patrons flocked to get water from Lady Well a mystical spring in the castle woods.
Overall Henry was a Slane man first and foremost and his passing marks the end of an era for those of us who grew up alongside him. We didn’t really know him but the vast majority of us liked the bits we did know.
He’ll be missed.
