The incredible story of a woman given away as a baby from a Galloway stately home has been captured in a book by her husband.
Stanella Clenaghan, of Terregles House, was born illegitimate – so described then – at a Carlisle nursing home on November 29, 1932.
Her single mother Anne, the daughter of Irish cattle dealer Jimmy Clenaghan, the mansion’s owner, had met a man at a Dumfries dance hall and fallen pregnant.
Stanella married at 17 and went on to have five children, two with her second husband John Barker.
Carlisle man John, 95, vowed to tell his wife’s story following her sad death from Alzheimer’s on October 12, 2020.
Now after years of research, his book “Lovely Stanella, My Quest for the Truth” has been published.
John told the Standard: “Stanella was not told about her biological mother until she was well into her twenties.
“From then on she became obsessed with finding out more. But sadly she found out little else.
“When she died a couple of years ago I decided to get to the truth.
“I made several visits to Terregles and talked to people who knew my wife’s biological family and the centuries-old Maxwell connection with the now demolished Terregles House.
“I also travelled to Lisburn where the story really started about 150 years ago.
“I also did a lot of investigating in the Carlisle area.”
Terregles House – the former Maxwell family seat between Shawhead and Dumfries – was demolished 61 years ago.
The Dumfries and Galloway Standard reported in 1961 that the imposing sandstone property was to be blown up the following year.
John records: “The explosion was a big event locally and nationally.
“The photos appeared in the press which Stella found fascinating.”
Terregles boasted 120 rooms, including 14 bedrooms and four servants’ rooms as well as its own laundry and chapel.
The Clenaghans, a wealthy Irish Catholic family, had fled to Scotland for safety in the early 20th century following arson attacks by Loyalist rioters on their home at Lisburn near Belfast.
John writes: “The Clenaghan family today is big and widely scattered.
“All of these family members I have contacted have been very helpful and very kind in coming forward with information about their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.
“Nearly all of them knew nothing of Stella’s actual existence.
“The first that many of the family heard of Stanella was through a phone call or email from me soon after her death.
“They then learned to their amazement that they had a completely new female relative who had been hidden away from them for more than three-quarters of a century.”
John added: “My wife was a strikingly beautiful woman who was denied this wealthy lifestyle she should have had.
“Instead, she was given away as a baby.
“Her Irish mother did not want her but a loving working class couple in Carlisle took the baby in and gave her a name.
“Sadly, mother and daughter never did meet again.
“Both died without that much longed-for meeting.”
Stella, with three sons from her first marriage, met John at a dance in Carlisle in 1960.
The couple married the following year and went on to have a daughter and son of their own.
Lovely Stanella, My Quest for the Truth, is published by P3 Publications, 3 Beaver Road, Carlisle at £12.
