Brede Place, East Sussex A fourteenth-century manor house described by Sir Edwin Lutyens as the most interesting and haunted inhabited house in Sussex. It was bought by Moreton Frewen, Clare Sheridan’s father, in 1898 and Clare was brought up there. Her mother Clara spent years of her life restoring the house and creating the garden, and her ghost is one of many said to haunt the house. Her appearances are marked by wafts of the violet scent she used to wear. Clare visited Brede often when her nephew Roger Frewen owned the house, and created several sculptures there.
Frampton Court, Dorset Owned by various members of the Sheridan family including Clare’s son, Richard, who was born at Frampton in 1932. Built by Robert Brown in 1704 on the site of an ancient priory, in 1790 the park was laid out by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. The house carried a curse in response to Henry viii’s expulsion of the priory’s monks. The curse decreed that no firstborn son would inherit and live. Clare urged Richard to sell Frampton but the estate failed to find a buyer. Unbeknown to Clare, Richard held on to a single acre where a relative was buried. Touring France on his twenty-first birthday, he died suddenly of peritonitis.
Glenveagh Castle, Co. Donegal Large castellated mansion built in about 1870. Bought by Henry McIlhenny of Philadelphia – the only glamorous inhabitant there, according to Andy Warhol – in 1938. The glamorous Mr McIlhenny was very rich; previous McIlhennys had invented the gas meter and Tabasco sauce. Henry had a dazzling art collection, including paintings by Stubbs and Landseer, and created a lush garden on the estate of 40,000 mountainous and wooded acres. Anita, Bill and Tarka visited Glenveagh every September to cull the herd of red deer. Henry gifted the estate to the Irish nation and moved back to Philadelphia where he died in 1986.
Castle Leslie, Glaslough, Co. Monaghan Seat of the Leslies since 1665. Built by Sir John Leslie, 1st Baronet and a Member of Parliament, in 1870 on the site of an earlier castle. It has three lakes, extensive woodland and a Renaissance-style cloister. As a child, Anita loved Glaslough and begged her parents to allow her to spend all her school holidays there. She and Bill took over the running of the estate after the war but were persuaded by Desmond to hand over the ownership, something she regretted for the rest of her life. She spent most of the money she earned from her books buying Glaslough farmland for her son Tarka, leading to family feuds. As in so many Irish houses, Castle Leslie was prone to spooky goings-on. When Winston Churchill (a Leslie nephew) died, crashes and bangs in the loft, mysterious footsteps in the west wing and Leonie Leslie’s familiar fingertip drumming were heard. The estate was on the border between the North and the Irish Republic. In 1980 during the Troubles, after three men were shot dead within a mile of the house, Anita wrote to her stepmother Iris that Glaslough had become ‘the most dangerous place in Europe’.
Oranmore Castle, Co. Galway On the site of a Norman keep beside Galway Bay. Dating from the fifteenth century, it may have been built on the site of an older castle. From the seventeenth century it was owned by the Blakes, one of Galway’s twelve tribes. The tower, which is half the height of the castle, and the adjoining house were ruinous when Marjorie Leslie, assisted by her friend the lawyer and writer Oliver St John Gogarty, bought it for £200 for her daughter Anita who, after the war, had decided that she wanted to live in the west of Ireland. In spite of the castle’s eight-foot-thick walls, George Jellicoe, visiting Anita in 1948, complained that the sea came through the windows. Attractively renovated, Oranmore is now the home of Anita and Bill’s daughter Leonie and her husband, the musician Alec Finn.