The Hely-Hutchinsons

Posted: December 13, 2025 | Author: helytimes | Filed under: hely, Ireland | Leave a comment

Every year Christmas season rolls around, and everyone asks me if I’m any relation to the composer Victor Hely-Hutchinson, of “The Carol Symphony.”

No, I can’t claim it. Perhaps 500 years ago we were all part of some proto Hely clan, who can know. Perplexity AI estimates there are some 60,000-100,000 “Healys” and hundreds/low thousands of “Helys” worldwide.

The Hely-Hutchinsons are their own deal, a semi-distinguished Anglo-Irish family. They start with John Hely:

In 1751 married Christina Nickson:

and took on the name of her rich uncle, Richard Hutchinson.

He added Hutchinson to his surname in consequence of the marriage, which brought him her considerable fortune.

says the 1911 Encylopedia Britannica:

He was a man of brilliant and versatile ability, whom Lord Townshend, the Lord Lieutenant, described as by far the most powerful man in parliament. William Gerard Hamilton said of him that Ireland never bred a more able, nor any country a more honest man. Hely-Hutchinson was, however, an inveterate place-hunter, and there was a point in Lord North’s witticism that if you were to give him the whole of Great Britain and Ireland for an estate, he would ask the Isle of Man for a potato garden.

Hely-Hutchinson ended up becoming provost of Trinity College, Dublin:

For this great academic position Hely-Hutchinson was in no way qualified, and his appointment to it for purely political service to the government was justly criticised with much asperity.

Too bad he didn’t keep his hands on Frescati House.

Mrs. Hely-Hutchinson became the Baroness Donoughmore. Their kids had interesting careers. Richard Hely Hely-Hutchinson commissioned Knocklofty House:

(source)

which has sadly lost its grandeur due to abandonment. Here’s a YouTube. I fear it’s beyond repair.

Richard’s brother, grumpy looking John, was at the Battle of Alexandria

and took command after Abercromby was killed. He never married. The Earlship passed along.

The fourth earl was president of the Board of Trade and makes a brief cameo in Shelby Foote’s Civil War.

The fourth Earl’s second son was Walter, who became governor of the Cape Colony. His wife was May, Lady Hely-Hutchinson:

In 1902, she published the article “Female Emigration to South Africa”, where she bluntly and at length complained about the quality of available domestic servants:

[…] each class has its allotted duties, and the woman who deliberately neglects or ignores the more delicate or involved social duties of her class is quite as blameworthy as the servant who, instead of attending to her duties, spends what she considers her own, but what is really her mistress’s time, in gazing out of a window or reading a ‘penny dreadful.’

They were the parents of the composer.

The winter of 1947 was very long-lasting and to save fuel (which was still rationed), Hely-Hutchinson refused to switch on the radiators in his office. He developed a cold, which became influenza.

(Family trait? maybe we are related.)

Just to finish off the Earls: the fifth earl was this guy:

And the sixth was this big boi:

His son was the 7th Earl, whose most memorable moment came when he was kidnapped by the IRA from Knocklofty House in 1974. Luckily this kidnapping was more comic than tragic. From a 2008 Irish Independent article, “Couple Formed Unlikely Bond with Kidnappers“:

The RTE documentary series, Hostage, reveals how there was a good-humoured clash of cultures during the kidnapping, with Lady Donoughmore sending her compliments to the chef for a fry cooked for them by the head of the gang. On another occasion, their son revealed, one of their guards blurted out the answer to a Gaelic games crossword question.

“My mother was working on a crossword puzzle and one of the questions was, ‘Whose colours are black and amber in Gaelic games?’ There were a couple of people guarding them who were local volunteers and told never to speak to them. My father had gone through about eight counties and the man said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t you know it’s Kilkenny’?”

The 8th Earl was the last of the earls, because the 1999 House of Lords Act reformed things. The 8th Earl’s kids include the painter Nicholas (his gallery) and the publisher Tim, and his grandkids include Alex the London restauranteur.

Thus the Hely-Hutchinsons. Let’s all listen to The Carol Symphony together!

Sidequest: on Christiana Hely-Hutchinson’s wikipedia page, it claims she’s an ancestress of Katharine, Duchess of Kent:

but I can’t follow the connection if there is one. Katharine is the mother of Lady Helen Taylor:

The British press is savage. They’re just calling a Lady “Melons.”

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