In the inner courtyard at Castello di Maniace he erected in 1891 a large Ionian or Celtic cross, made to his own design of local black lava from Mount Etna and sculpted locally, in memory of Admiral Lord Nelson and inscribed on the base "Heroi Immortali Nili" ("To the immortal hero of the Nile"), the Battle of the Nile having particular significance in the saving of the Kingdom of Sicily and Naples from Napoleonic conquest. This resulted from a complaint by his aunt Jane Sarah Hood (Lady Hotham) when visiting with his father in 1888, that no monument existed, to which the Duke replied in jest that Wren's epitaph in St Paul's Cathedral states "Si monumentum requiris circumspice" ("if you seek his monument look around you"). Lady Hotham promptly sent him the requisite funds, with which he erected the monument. He erected another Celtic cross in the ducal cemetery at Maniace, on the grave of his close friend and frequent visitor the "Celtic" poet William Sharp (d.1905), who died at Maniace, author of "Through Nelson's Duchy" (1903).