Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) was an Irish peer and prolific author of stories, novels, plays, poetry and essays, and his work is still published today. Born Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, he spent much of his childhood in Shoreham where his mother had inherited Dunstall Priory, a house on the eastern hill. He spent some of his holidays in Ireland at the family seat, Dunsany Castle, which had belonged to the Plunketts for centuries.
He was educated at Eton where he began to write stories and poems. After Eton he was sent to Sandhurst, joined the Coldstream Guards, and was serving in the Boer War in 1899 when he succeeded to the title. He left the army when he realised that he wanted to be a full-time writer. During the 1914-18 war he re-enlisted and became a captain in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers but was badly wounded in the Easter Rising in Dublin. He recovered to spend time serving on the Western Front.
After the War he divided his time between England and Ireland, where he became associated with the Irish Literary Renaissance. As an author he is particularly remembered for stories of fantasy, from his first collection The Gods of Pegana (1905) to his most enduring novel The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924). There is much of Kent in The Blessings of Pan (1927), portraying an isolated village gradually overwhelmed by the old ways of paganism. These works attempt to convey a magical link between human beings and the natural world, and Dunsany is credited as one of the pioneers in the genre.
Lord Dunsany was a popular figure in the village, presiding over many events. He was a particular lover of chess and cricket and was president of the Village Players. He also became known for eccentricity: at the ceremony inaugurating the Cross on the Hill in 1920, he took off his hat to reveal a large cabbage leaf underneath designed to keep him cool on a sweltering day. This was the occasion of his stirring speech calling on the young to remember this ceremony and tend the Cross: “It may be in the future than the place we know as London will come over the hills, and if that happens this spot will still be kept sacred amid its streets and traffic.”
In 1940 the Dunsanys were in neutral Ireland when he heard of the call for volunteers for the Home Guard. He immediately prepared for his return to Shoreham where he was to witness the Battle of Britain from the high ground of Dunstall Priory and to patrol the woods, experiences which inspired several war-time poems including the bitter “Fauna of Kent”, “In a Kentish Wood” and “The Craters” –
And children playing in those dells,
Deep in the chalk below the clay,
Will never ask if history tells,
What shaped the hollows where they play…
Deep in the chalk below the clay,
Will never ask if history tells,
What shaped the hollows where they play…
After 1945 he handed over the responsibilities of Dunsany Castle to his son and lived full-time at Dunstall Priory. He was visiting Ireland in 1957 when he died unexpectedly of appendicitis, having left instructions: “I want to be buried in Kent in the churchyard of Shoreham so as to share with every one of my neighbours whatever may be coming, when I am dead, as I shared it through the summer of 1940 when alive.”
You can read more in Historical Society Publication No. 37, “Lord Dunsany”
Text by Mary Symons and Ted Hofmann