Lady Cumnor Barbara Leigh-Hunt Lady Cumnor holds a yearly party at the family estate for Hollingford guests. It is there, at The Towers, that the young Molly first encounters her future stepmother, Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Exhausted from the heat and excitement of the day, Molly becomes separated from her chaperones, the Miss Brownings, and falls asleep in the shade of a cedar tree. Discovered by Lady Harriet, she is entrusted into Mrs. Kirkpatrick's care. Distinguished stage and screen actress Barbara Leigh-Hunt was already a fan of Elizabeth Gaskell before accepting the role of Lady Cumnor. "Some years ago I played the voice of Elizabeth Gaskell in a radio production about Charlotte Brontë and discovered they were great friends in their day. It was then that I read Gaskell and discovered her generously observed portraits. I was struck by how well she writes both men and women." Leigh-Hunt appeared most recently as the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh in the BBC's adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and as Iris Fleming in ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre's A Perfect Hero.