Advertisement

Lord Rossmore, architectural photographer who wooed Marianne Faithfull away from Mick Jagger – obituary

Lord Rossmore with Marianne Faithfull at Dublin airport in 1970 - Daily Mail/Shutterstock
Lord Rossmore with Marianne Faithfull at Dublin airport in 1970 - Daily Mail/Shutterstock

Lord Rossmore, who has died aged 90, was a lanky and diffident Irish peer who established a reputation as an architectural photographer and briefly made headlines when he became engaged to the ultimate rock chick, Marianne Faithfull.

The link was Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin, who had become involved in efforts to conserve Ireland’s architectural heritage with Mariga Guinness, and her husband Desmond, co-founders of the Irish Georgian Society. After coming down from Cambridge Paddy Rossmore took his camera and joined Desmond FitzGerald and Mariga Guinness on their travels around Ireland.

Despite his amateur status, his evocative photographs captured the fading glories of Ireland’s Georgian heritage, helping to promote the cause of conservation, and were much sought after by books and magazines such as Country Life, his collection eventually being placed in the Irish Architectural Archive.

It was in 1970 at a weekend house party at FitzGerald’s family seat, Glin Castle on the Shannon estuary, that he met Marianne Faithfull and her then boyfriend Mick Jagger, friends of Desmond FitzGerald and his wife Olda. As she recalled in her memoirs Faithfull: an Autobiography (2000), Marianne had been looking for an “honourable” way out of her relationship with the Rolling Stone when she met Rossmore, 16 years her senior.

“He was so Anglo-Irish: long thin legs that curled up in that English aristocratic way,” she recalled – “in short, the sort of man my mother always wanted me to marry”.

He was totally unlike Jagger, “very clever and bookish” and “monkish and spiritual, the product of many years of civilisation” – so spiritual in fact that at first he knew nothing of her heroin addiction, as well as a barbiturate and alcohol habit which she had developed in an attempt to kick the heroin.

Under normal circumstances, she conceded, her interest in Rossmore would have been nothing more than a flirtation, but she was desperate: “I don’t know if I really loved him or merely saw a way out [of her relationship with Jagger].”

For Marianne Faithfull, Rossmore represented a way out of her relationship with Mick Jagger: 'I used Paddy,' she later admitted, 'but I figured he was a grown-up and knew the score' - PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy
For Marianne Faithfull, Rossmore represented a way out of her relationship with Mick Jagger: 'I used Paddy,' she later admitted, 'but I figured he was a grown-up and knew the score' - PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy

A few weeks after they met, on June 26 1970 the Daily Express carried the banner headline “ ‘My Marianne’ – Irish peer Lord Rossmore announces his plan to make an honest woman of Marianne”, and there followed a rash of stories about her dumping Jagger for her new lover.

An article in the Irish Press, reporting on the couple’s arrival at Dublin Airport, described Marianne Faithfull as “the picture of virtue, innocence and demure womanliness”, observing that her outfit revealed “the beginning of Miss Faithfull’s remarkably beautiful cleavage”.

The engagement lasted only a few months, however. “I used Paddy,” she recalled later, “but I figured he was a grown-up and knew the score.” They remained on good terms, and in 2011 Marianne Faithfull attended his 80th birthday party.

If Paddy Rossmore had known nothing of her drug habit to begin with, he soon did (“Poor old Paddy was engaged to a zombie,” she wrote later), and paid for her to see a Harley Street specialist.

But as he recalled later it did not make sense to him that instead of being weaned off drugs altogether she was being prescribed alternative drugs to help with her addiction.

A friend of his suggested that he should research alternative approaches influenced by Synanon, a rehab community in California which emphasised unsparing self-examination and critical group therapy sessions; he visited Phoenix House, a therapeutic community in London.

Rossmore's photographs of Irish country houses were published as a coffee-table book
Rossmore's photographs of Irish country houses were published as a coffee-table book

Back in Ireland he was the moving spirit behind the establishment in 1973 of the Coolmine Therapeutic Community, an addiction recovery centre near Dublin. Since it began thousands have passed through its doors. Lord Rossmore regarded it as his proudest achievement.

He was born William Warner Westenra, on February 14 1931, the son of the 5th/6th Lord Rossmore and Dolores née Wilson. The Westenra family, of Dutch descent, came to Ireland in the 17th century and became prominent landowners in Co Monaghan.

The Irish barony was created in 1796 for Robert Cuninghame, an Army general who had fought at Culloden and served as Commander-in-Chief of Ireland from 1793 to 1796. When he died childless, the title was inherited by a Westenra nephew who was, in addition, created Baron Rossmore in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1838.

William Westenra became known as Paddy after a nanny gave him the nickname, and was educated at Eton. Following National Service as a 2nd lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry, he read Theology at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1957.

A gentle, rather other-worldly man, he had thoughts of training for the priesthood, but in 1958 he inherited the Rossmore titles on the death of his father and returned to the family estates in Ireland where, among other things, he became the national salmon fly-casting champion, an achievement which led to him setting up a small business making fishing flies at Rossmore Park with his farm manager Col Judkins.

The Gothic castle, which had been the family seat since 1827, had been abandoned after the Second World War and was demolished in the 1970s. Rossmore lived initially in the estate’s dower house and later its gamekeeper’s lodge – until it was burnt down by the IRA in 1981. He subsequently sold the estate and spent his later years in London.

In 2019 some of his photographs of Irish country houses were published as a coffee-table book and he also published a monograph about the artist Betty Swanwick, a friend whose work he collected.

In 1982 he married Valerie (née Tobin). The marriage was dissolved and he is survived by a son and a stepdaughter.

His son, Benedict Westenra, born in 1983, inherits the Rossmore titles.

Lord Rossmore, born February 14 1931, died May 4 2021