Friday, October 11, 2024

The 5th Baron Delamere 1934-2024

  The Baron Delamere, who has died aged 90, was the fifth baron in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, a landowner in Kenya, of the family who were central figures in the 'Happy Valley Set'.

Hugh George Cholmondeley was born 18 January, 1934, son of the 4th Baron Delamere (1900-1979), and his first wife the former Phyllis Anne Montagu Douglas Scott (1904-1978), scion of the Dukes of Buccleuch & Queensberry (and a granddaughter of the 5th Duke of Buccleuch and the 7th Duke of Rutland). The Delameres were members of the Kenyan 'Happy Valley' set, made famous by the book and film 'White Mischief'.

Hugh Cholmondeley's step-mother, was the femme fatale and beauty Diana Colvile (former wife of Vernon Motion;  widow of Sir Henry John Delves Broughton, 11th Bt.;  former wife of Gilbert de Preville Colvile; who died in 1987), 2nd daughter of Seymour Caldwell, of Hove, co. Sussex. Before she married the 4th Baron, she was at the centre of a story so shocking that it was turned into the best-selling book White Mischief, later a film starring Greta Scacchi as the libidinous socialite. In 1941 Diana's lover the Earl of Erroll, a dissolute womaniser – played by Charles Dance in the film – was shot dead at the wheel of his car on the outskirts of Nairobi. But there were no witnesses to the shooting and the crime remains unsolved.

As the Hon Hugh Cholmondeley he married 11 Apr 1964, Mrs Ann Willoughby Tinné (former wife of Michael Patrick Tinné), & only daughter of Sir Patrick Muir Renison GCMG (1911-1965), of Freeman's Farm House, Mayfield, co. Sussex, sometime Governor of Kenya, by whom he had one son.

The Old Etonian succeeded his father as 5th Baron Delamere, 13 April, 1979. His homes were the vast 200,000 acre estate at Sugoni Farm, Soysambu, Elmenteita, Kenya, and in London's Holland Park Road.

Lord and Lady Delamere had one son, the Hon Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley (born 19 January, 1968).  In April 2005 at Kenya Thomas Cholmondeley accidentally shot and killed an undercover Kenya Wildlife Service ranger, believing him to be an armed robber, and in May 2009 at Kenya he was convicted of manslaughter for killing a poacher on his estate in May 2006. He died from a cardiac arrest, 16 August, 2016.

Lord Delamere is succeeded in the peerage (created in 1821), by a grandson, Hugh Derrick Cholmondeley, who was born 9 November, 1998.

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