Melosina Anne Lenox-Conyngham

Melosina Lenox-Conyngham (22 February 1941 – 1 October 2011) was an Irish explorer and writer.

Early life and family Melosina Anne Lenox-Conyngham was born in Ceylon on 22 February 1941, the daughter of Gerald Hamilton Lenox-Conyngham and Joanna ('Joan') Vernon Butler. Her father, a tea planter in Wattegoda, was a nephew of Sir Gerald Lenox-Conyngham. A maternal uncle was Hubert Butler. The family evacuated from Ceylon in advance of a Japanese invasion to Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, with her father serving with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Her brother, Vere, was born in Rhodesia in August 1942. The three then lived near Durban, South Africa for two years. Her sister, Eleanor, was born in 1946. Towards the end of World War II, the family returned to Ceylon, where Lenox-Conyngham began her schooling. She was later sent as a boarder to a finishing school, Brondesbury-at-Stocks, Hertfordshire, England, taking some French classes in the University of Grenoble, and holidaying with relatives in Ireland.

Career Lenox-Conyngham held varying positions in a number of countries: a ski bum in Mount Snow, Vermont, secretary to the editor of a farmers' journal, a tennis coach in a hotel in Miami, Florida, and was employed for a period as the secretary to Sir Geoffrey Agnew, an antiques dealer, in London. She inherited Lavistown Cottage, County Kilkenny from an uncle and aunt, living there permanently from around 1973. From here, she rode with the Kilkenny Hunt. She continued to travel, living for months at a time in places such as Afghanistan, Malaya and China, generally travelling alone and on a whim.