KEN FOY, CRIME CORRESPONDENT – 19 AUGUST 2013

GARDAI have launched a major investigation after photographs of a teenage girl performing an intimate act in public at last weekend’s Eminem concert went viral online.

Hundreds of internet users have shared the images which show the girl in broad daylight with a man at the Slane venue in Meath on Saturday.

The girl – who is a secondary school student from the west of Ireland – has been left devastated after the images appeared on social networking sites.

The matter is now the subject of a garda investigation which is being led by officers based at Navan Garda Station.

A senior source revealed that gardai have interviewed the teenage girl and have also spoken with her distraught parents.

At this stage officers have not spoken with others featured in the photographs.

“This case is at a very early stage but what has happened here is a matter of concern for gardai,” a source said.

Overlooking the River Boyne, just a few kilometres upstream from Newgrange and the site of the famous Battle of the Boyne, Slane Castle in its existing form was constructed under the direction of William Burton Conyngham, together with his nephew The 1st Marquess Conyngham. The reconstruction dates back to 1785 and is principally the work of James Gandon, James Wyatt and Francis Johnston. Francis Johnston was also the architect responsible for the gothic gates on the Mill Hill, located to the east of the castle.

The Conynghams are originally a Scottish Protestant family, who first settled in Ireland in 1611, during the Plantation of Ulster in County Donegal. At that time (and during the rest of both the 17th century and 18th century), the family gained extensive lands around the village of Mountcharles, near Donegal Town in the south of County Donegal. The family also gained an extensive estate in West Donegal, especially in The Rosses district.

There has been an active association between the Conynghams and the Slane Estate in County Meath dating back over 300 years, ever since the property was purchased by the family following the Williamite Confiscations in 1701. Around that time, the family moved their main ancestral seat south from County Donegal in west Ulster to Slane. Prior to this, Slane Castle had been in the possession of the Flemings, Anglo-Norman Catholics who had aligned themselves with the Jacobites in the War of the Grand Alliance, and thus after the Williamite victory, their property was eligible for confiscation. Christopher Fleming, 22nd of Slane, 17th Lord, Viscount Longford (1669 – 14 July 1726), was the last Fleming Lord of Slane. The present owner of the castle is Henry Conyngham who styles himself,[4] as the 8th Marquess Conyngham.

In 1991, a fire in the castle caused extensive damage to the building and completely gutted the eastern section facing the River Boyne. The castle reopened in 2001 after the completion of a ten-year restoration programme. In 2003, a cannon associated with the castle was found in the nearby River Boyne[5]

On the eastward side of the castle demesne, directly between the river Boyne and the villages Church of Ireland chapel in Slane, lay the ruins of St. Erc's Hermitage a 15th century multi-storey chapel, and with some 500 metres westward of St. Erc's Hermitage an ancient well can also be found. In one of the central texts of Irish mythology, the Cath Maige Tuireadh, this well is said to have been blessed by the God Dian Cecht so that the Tuatha Dé Danann could bathe in it and be healed, allegedly healing all mortal wounds except decapitation.[6] However with the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, and the policy of Christian reinterpretation for traditionally pagan sites, the well is now more commonly referred to as Our lady's well.

The Most Hon. Henry Vivien Pierpont Conyngham, 8th Marquess Conyngham (born 25 May 1951),[1] is an Anglo-Irish nobleman who holds a title in the United Kingdom Peerage of Ireland. However Article 40.2 of the Irish Constitution forbids the state conferring titles of nobility and a citizen may not accept titles of nobility or honour except with the prior approval of the Government, present titles of peerage being considered anachronistic, titles of peerage are thus regarded as simply courtesy titles.[2]

Styled Viscount Slane until 1974 and Earl of Mount Charles from 1974 until 2009, he succeeded his father in the marquessate in March 2009, although in the Republic of Ireland he is often (and erroneously) still referred to as 'Henry Mountcharles'. The Marquess Conyngham has a high profile in Ireland with a weekly column in the Irish Daily Mirror. He is often termed 'the rock and roll aristocrat' or 'the rock and roll peer' owing to his very successful series of rock concerts from 1981, held in the natural amphitheatre of the grounds of Slane Castle. These have included The Rolling Stones, Thin Lizzy, Queen, U2, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Guns N' Roses, Oasis and Madonna. Lord Conyngham received the Industry Award at the 2010 Meteor Awards.[3] In his autobiography Public Space–Private Life: A Decade at Slane Castle, he described his business career and the challenges of being an Anglo-Irish peer in modern Ireland, and how being Anglo-Irish has gradually become more accepted there.
He is the son of The 7th Marquess Conyngham (1924-2009) and his wife, Eileen Wren Newsom.

Henry, Lord Conyngham, was educated at Harrow School and Harvard University. He had two children with his first wife, Juliet Ann Kitson:
Alexander Burton Conyngham, Earl of Mount Charles (born 30 January 1975), who is married to a granddaughter of The 4th Baron Terrington (died 1998), and has a daughter and two sons,
Rory Nicholas Burton Conyngham, Viscount Slane (born 2010) and
Caspar Conyngham (born 2012).[4][5]
Henrietta Tamara Juliet Anson, Countess of Lichfield (born 1976), who is married to The 6th Earl of Lichfield (son and heir of the famous photographer)[6]
Henry and Juliet divorced.[when?] He remarried in 1985 to Lady Iona Charlotte Grimston (b. 1953), youngest daughter of The 6th Earl of Verulam, by whom he has a daughter:

Lady Tamara Jane Conyngham (born 1991).[7]
In 1992, when he held the courtesy title Earl of Mount Charles, he ran an unsuccessful election campaign to win a seat for the Fine Gael party in Louth. He stood for Seanad Éireann in 1997 for Trinity College, Dublin, and as a Fine Gael candidate for a European Parliament seat in 2004. Lord Conyngham lives both in Beauparc House in County Meath and at Slane Castle, the ancestral home which was badly damaged by fire in 1992, but which has since been restored.[citation needed] Lord Conyngham's eldest son and heir apparent, Lord Mount Charles, is usually known for short as Alex Mount Charles.