Situated to the immediate north of Kinvara, County Galway Dunguaire Castle was built in the early sixteenth century by the O’Hynes clan. Few of the tourists who stop to photograph the picturesque building know of its link with one of the great British society scandals of the last century. In 1918 Christabel Hart had married — against his family’s wishes — John Russell, heir to the second Lord Ampthill. Exceptionally tall and nicknamed ‘Stilts’ Russell enjoyed going to fancy dress balls in drag. Meanwhile his young wife spent the evenings in London dancing with a string of what her husband would refer to as ‘detestable young men.’ In June 1921, following a visit to a clairvoyant, Christabel Russell discovered she was five months pregnant. John Russell denied paternity and at once sued for divorce, claiming that no physical contact whatever had taken place between them and that the marriage had, on her insistence, never been fully consummated. In the resultant court case it transpired the couple had shared a bed for two nights just before Christmas 1920. According to Christabel Russell her husband had taken the opportunity to attempt what was referred to in accounts of the resultant court case as ‘incomplete’ or ‘partial’ intercourse; it seems he had already tried to do the same on several previous occasions, which she described as ‘Hunnish scenes, usually preceded by threats to shoot himself and once to shoot my cat, which often slept on the bed.’ Matters became still more confused when it was discovered that Christabel Russell, despite her pregnancy, showed ‘all the signs of virginity.’ One widespread explanation was that she had taken a bath immediately after her husband and had used the same sponge: even in later life her son Geoffrey (the fourth Lord Ampthill) was popularly known as the ‘sponge baby.’ The Russells eventually divorced in 1937 and Christabel, Lady Ampthill moved to Ireland, settling in County Galway where she enjoyed the hunting. For several decades until her death in 1976 her home was Dunguaire Castle.