18/12/2024
📰 Mayo socialite immortalised by The Beatles
‘A crowd of people stood and stared�They’d seen his face before�Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords’
– The Beatles, A Day in the Life
📅 London socialite Tara Browne of Castlemacgarrett House outside Claremorris was killed in a traffic accident in London on this day in 1966. See the below entry from Máirtín Ó Maicín’s book On This Day In Mayo for more.
✍️ On a cold December night in 1966,Tara Browne had a dinner in London with model Suki Potier, his most recent inamorata. Having left the restaurant with his date after midnight, Browne was driving a borrowed Lotus Elan, a high-performance sports car, when he failed to notice a red traffic light and drove through a junction.
In doing so he was forced to swerve violently to avoid hitting another car emerging at the junction. However, he was unable to avoid colliding with a van which was parked nearby. Although Potier survived with minor injuries, Browne suffered a fractured skull and lacerations to his brain. He was pronounced dead two hours later.
The short life of the younger son of Lord Oranmore and Browne and his second wife, Oonagh Guinness, had come to a shattering conclusion. The 21-year-old socialite had made a name for himself on the London social scene of the ’60s by befriending various celebrities including emerging musicians from the burgeoning pop music scene such as Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones. Like them he would develop a liking not only for rock ‘n’ roll but also the lifestyle that went with it.
Browne was born in 1945 and spent the early years of his life in Castlemacgarrett House outside Claremorris. After his parents’ marriage came to an end, he went to live with his mother at her own personal property, Luggala House, in Wicklow, along with his elder brother, Garech.
In the years following the separation, Tara and Garech regularly visited Castlemacgarrett, sometimes staying for weeks on end. During these visits both of them came to love traditional Irish music, experiencing it first hand from local musicians playing at Christmas parties and from listening to Ciarán Mac Mathúna’s programmes on Radio Éireann.This interest would continue into the late 1950s with Tara accompanying his older brother to various fleadhanna ceoil all over the country.
While Garech became a pivotal figure in the promotion of Irish music and culture later in life, Tara followed a rather different trajectory. As he grew older and having inherited considerable wealth, he immersed himself in the Swinging Sixties culture that had emerged in London. And with that came a lifestyle infused with multiple girlfriends, drugs and fast cars.
It was a direction doomed to end in tragedy that was immortalised in the Beatles’ song, A Day in the Life.
📖 Sources: Howard, Paul. I Read The News Today, Oh Boy. Picador, 2016.�The Beatles, ‘A Day In The Life.’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone, 1967. Macken, John. 2022.
📗📕 On This Day in Mayo is a unique book that connects every day of the year with a Mayo person or event. Published by Mayo Books Press in Castlebar, it’s a high-quality, hardback book which has proven a great Christmas gift for anyone with a grá for Mayo.
📌 It’s on sale in all good bookshops and online via: https://www.mayobooks.ie/On-This-Day-Mayo-Mairtin-O-Maicin
