Hundreds pay respects as the last Knight of Glin laid to rest

A 100-YEAR-OLD horse-drawn farm cart carried the last Knight of Glin to his final resting place in Co Limerick yesterday.

Hundreds of people joined the family of the late Desmond John Villiers Fitzgerald for a funeral service and celebration of his life at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Glin. The 74- year-old died on September 15 after a long battle with cancer.

He was the 29th Knight of Glin and is survived by his wife Olda and daughters Catherine, Nesta and Honor.

His death marks the end of an era for the Knights of Glin as, with no son to inherit the 700- year-old title, the unbroken line of knights who lived at Glin Castle, Co Limerick has now ended.

Among the chief mourners at yesterday’s funeral service was Mr Fitzgerald’s son-in-law, actor Dominic West, who helped carry the knight’s coffin into the church after it arrived on the back of a horse-drawn cart.

Staff from Glin Castle, including gardeners Tom Wall and Bill Noonan also acted as pallbearers, along with farmer Patsy Connolly, maintenance worker Leo Healy and local publican Tom O’Shaughnessy.

Among the mourners were the Countess of Dunraven and her daughter Lady Ana, The Honourable Garech Browne, Desmond and Penny Guinness, Sir Jack Leslie of Castle Leslie, The Earl and Countess of Rosse, Lord and Lady Waterford and Professor Ann Crookshank of Trinity College Dublin.

In his homily Robert Warren, Archdeacon of Limerick, Ardfert and Agahdoe, described the Knight of Glin as an integral part of the local community and described his death as the end of an era.

“I know that for many, titles can well be anachronistic in our modern-day life, but for those who have been privileged to share in those titles and in those lives, there is a sense of continuity and when a line such as the Knight of Glin comes to an end because of our rules of inheritance, there is of course sadness,” he said.