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MRS LE BLOND’S WAR

Mrs Le Blond’s War

From the First Shots to Post-War Reconstruction

Rosemary Raughter

I
n July 1914 Elizabeth (Lizzie) Le Blond was fifty-four years old.
Born in Dublin in 1860, she was brought up at Killincarrick
House near Greystones, inherited the Hawkins-Whitshed estate
on the death of her father when she was eleven, and at eighteen
married the famous soldier, adventurer and best-selling author
Captain Fred Burnaby. Widowed a few years later, she went on
to enjoy a distinguished career as an alpinist and pioneer
photographer, while also overseeing the development for
1
housing of part of her Greystones property. Having retired from
climbing in her forties, Lizzie could reasonably look forward to a
less onerous life of writing, travel and public service. But her
world, like that of countless others, was about to change more
radically than she could ever have imagined, and she herself
would play an active role in the tumultuous events which lay
ahead.

As the political crisis in Europe intensified during the summer
of 1914, Lizzie was holidaying with her invalid son, Arthur, in the
fashionable Swiss mountain resort of Flims. But the festivities
were increasingly overshadowed by rumours of war, and by 26
th
July the hotel’s international guests, Lizzie among them, began

1 For further details of the life and career of Elizabeth Le Blond (nee Hawkins-
Whitshed), see Rosemary Raughter, ‘The judge, the admiral and the lady alpinist:
the Hawkins-Whitshed family of Killincarrick and Greystones’, Greystones: its
buildings and history, vol I, 2012, pp 37-42.
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