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 WHEN GRACE KELLY CAME HOME!

Grace Kelly’s grandfather was a bricklayer from County Mayo. His name was John Peter Kelly and he was born in this tiny three-roomed cottage in Drimurla, in 1857. He left Ireland when he was 30 years of age, bound for Philadelphia where he would found one of the city’s leading construction companies and make his fortune.

Curious to discover her roots, Grace visited Ireland on three occasions and here she is in June 1961 at the old cottage where her grandfather was born and reared. At the time an elderly woman known locally as the Widow Mulchrone owned the old Kelly homestead, which was down a rambling old boreen. For weeks preparations had been made for the special visit. The roof was newly thatched, the hedges cut and the pathway sanded. Dressed in black, and wearing her finest apron, the widow had spent the morning baking griddle cakes and polishing the glassware and good china. Up in “the good room”, which doubled as the widow’s bedroom, she set the tables with china cups and saucers and bedecked it with a selection of cakes and soda bread. Back in the kitchen a big black kettle hung boiling and hissing over the open fire. The Widow Mulchrone regaled her royal visitors with stories and, at one point, told an on-duty policeman, 'Wet another cup of tay, the prince could murder another drop!'. She even recited a special poem to mark the occasion, which she dubbed the most important day of her life.

Grace visited several times and on her last visit in 1979, after the Widow Mulchone had passed away, she bought the old family homestead along with 35 acres of land. She wanted to keep the old cottage just as it was so she and Prince Rainier had architectural plans prepared for a new home to be built nearby. When they left, Grace told the local press she'd be back to see the home when it was finished.

Sadly, her dream never materialised. One fateful day in 1982, she suffered a sudden stroke while driving on a winding cliff-edge road in Monaco. Her car left the road. The fairytale princess was in a coma and was dead within a day. She was 52 years of age. For her funeral, local Mayo residents sent a wreath to Monaco. It was made from wild flowers picked around her ancestral home in Drimurla.

R.I.P. Grace Kelly.