Judith Blunt-Lytton, 16th Baroness Wentworth

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Lady Wentworth and her prized Arabian stallion, Skowronek

Judith Anne Dorothea Blunt-Lytton, 16th Baroness Wentworth also known as Lady Wentworth (6 February 1873–8 August 1957) was a British peeress, Arabian horse breeder and tennis player. As the owner of the Crabbet Arabian Stud from 1917 to 1957, her influence on Arabian horse breeding was profound, with over 90 percent of all Arabian horses in the world today carrying lines to Crabbet bloodstock in their pedigrees. ^[1]

Judith was the eldest daughter of the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and his wife, Lady Anne, a daughter of the 1st Earl of Lovelace and his mathematician wife, Ada. Judith spent most of her childhood in Egypt and the Middle East as her parents were buying Arabian horses for their Crabbet Arabian Stud. Thus, the family was familiar with middle eastern culture and fluently spoke both Arabic and Turkish.

On 2 February 1899, Judith married Neville Stephen Lytton, the youngest son of the Earl of Lytton. The marriage took place in Cairo, and they later moved into a house in the grounds of her parents' estate, Crabbet Park (near Crawley), filled with relics from Judith's great-grandfather, Lord Byron. The couple later had three children: Noel Anthony Scawen (1900-1985), Anne (later known as Lady Anne Lytton) (1901-1979) and Winifred (later known as Lady Winifrid Tryon) (1904-?).

In 1904, Judith's father turned over the Crabbet estate to her and she also changed her surname to Blunt-Lytton that year. Two years later, her estranged parents divided the estate, Wilfrid living close by at Newbuildings Place, while Lady Anne maintained an estate near Cairo, the Shaikh Obeyd Stud, where she also continued to raise Arabian horses.^[2]

In 1917, Judith inherited her mother's barony of Wentworth and the latter's share of the Crabbet Stud passed to Judith's daughters. This had angered Wilfrid and a lawsuit soon followed but was settled in favour of the granddaughters; as they were minors, however, Judith retained full control. Ownership of the Arabian horses went back and forth between the estates of father and daughter in the following years. Wilfred sold a number of horses in his control, mostly to pay off debts. Some animals were later repurchased by Judith, though others, especially those exported to the United States, were unable to be recovered. She also became estranged from her husband, eventually divorcing him in 1923. Noel soon remarried, but Lady Wentworth never did, focusing on managing Crabbet Park until her death.

Lady Wentworth's former husband had inherited his childless brother's earldom of Lytton in 1947, and on his own death in 1951, it passed to their only son. Lady Wentworth had become estranged from her children since the divorce and saw her son for the first time in thirty years on her deathbed in 1957 and her title also passed to him. Her daughter, Lady Anne Lytton, later provided valuable historical recollections of the horses and practices of the Crabbet Stud.^[3] Lady Wentworth's will stipulated that Crabbet be left to her stud manager and tennis marker Geoffrey Covey, but he had died a few days earlier than Lady Wentworth, thus the Stud passed to his son, Cecil. The house remains to this day, but when the new M23 motorway bisected the property in 1971, Covey, himself not a young man, had little choice but to sell the property and disperse the horses.