Barbara Rawdon Hastings, born Barbara Yelverton (20 May 1810 – 18 November 1858), in her own right 20th Baroness Grey de Ruthyn, by marriage Marchioness of Hastings, was a fossil collector and geological author.
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Born at Brandon House, Warwickshire, Barbara Yelverton was the only child of Henry Yelverton, 19th Baron Grey de Ruthyn (1780–1810), and of his wife Anna Maria Kelham (1792–1875). At seven months, her father's death made her Baroness Grey of Ruthyn. Little is known of her early life or education.[1]
On 1 August 1831, Lady Grey married George Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Marquess of Hastings (1808–1844), and they had six children together. Soon after her first husband's death, on 9 April 1845 she married secondly Captain Hastings Reginald Henry RN (1808–1878), who in 1849 took the name of Yelverton by royal licence. They settled at Efford House near Lymington and had one daughter, Barbara Yelverton (12 January 1849 – 1 October 1924), who married John Yarde-Buller, 2nd Baron Churston[1][2]
During her first marriage, Lady Hastings was nicknamed 'the jolly fast marchioness', as she was fond of foreign travel and gambling.[1]
Lady Hastings was an avid collector of fossils, specializing in vertebrates; during her second marriage, she set up her own palaeontological museum. The palaeontologist Richard Owen wrote of the thousands of fossils in her private museum at Efford House, among them "some of the finest in the world".[3] Her knowledge of local geology, especially of the Eocene, and her meticulous work on fossil remains, gave her an expertise which was respected by scholars. The geologist Edward Forbes said she was "a 'fossilist' and knows her work".[4]
Owen named a crocodile recovered from the Barton Beds at Hordle Cliff in Hampshire Crocodilus hastingsae to honour "the accomplished lady by whom the singularly perfect example of the species had been recovered and restored".[1]
In 1847, Lady Hastings spoke to the Oxford meeting of the British Association, exhibiting two crocodile skulls and the shell of a turtle from Hordle Cliff. Richard Owen told the meeting that some remains from Hordle suggested "a new genus of Pachyderm", which he named Paloplotherium, falling between Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium.[1] She argued that crocodile remains found on the Hampshire coast and also on the Isle of Wight showed that the area of the Solent had been a freshwater river or lake.[1]
In 1852 and 1853 she published papers on the stratigraphy of Hordle Cliff (which she called the Hordwell cliff), the first such accurate accounts of it.[5]
| Peerage of England | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Henry Yelverton |
Baroness Grey de Ruthyn 1810–1858 |
Succeeded by Henry Rawdon-Hastings |