Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry

Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry DBE (3 December 1878 – 23 April 1959) was a noted and influential society hostess in the United Kingdom between World War I and World War II.

Family and personal life

Circe and the Sirens: A Group Portrait of the Honourable Edith Chaplin, Marchioness of Londonderry, and Her Three Youngest Daughters, Charles Edmund Brock.

Born as Edith Helen Chaplin in Blankney, Lincolnshire, she was the daughter of Henry Chaplin (later the 1st Viscount Chaplin). After the death of her mother in 1881, Edith was raised largely at Dunrobin Castle, Sutherland, the estate of her maternal grandfather, the third Duke of Sutherland.

On 28 November 1899, she married Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, who later inherited his father's title in 1915, whereupon Edith became Marchioness of Londonderry. They had five children, the firstborn of whom, their only son, Robin, became the 8th Marquess in 1949, at which point Lady Londonderry became Dowager Marchioness of Londonderry. One of Lady Londonderry's grandchildren, Annabel Goldsmith, is also a noted London socialite.

She died of cancer on 23 April 1959, aged 80.

Public works

In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, she was appointed the Colonel-in-Chief of the Women's Volunteer Reserve (WVR), a volunteer force formed of women replacing the men who had left work and gone up to the Front. The WVR was established in December 1914 in response to German bombing raids on East Coast towns during the First World War (see 'Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex', Lucy Noakes, p. 53).

Lady Londonderry also aided with the organisation of the Officers' Hospital set up in her house, and was the first woman to be appointed to be a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Military Division, upon the Order's establishment in 1917.

Lady Londonderry's friendship with Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, although platonic, was a source of gossip in her time and has since become an iconic friendship of English social history.[1]

Legacy

Characteristically luxuriant planting contained within formally clipped edging

During the 1920s, Lady Londonderry created the gardens at the Londonderry family estate of Mount Stewart, near Newtownards, County Down. She added the Shamrock Garden, the Sunken Garden, increased the size of the lake, added a Spanish Garden with a small hut, the Italian Garden, the Dodo Terrace, Menagerie, the Fountain Pool and laid out walks in the Lily Wood and rest of the estate. This dramatic change led to the gardens being proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[2] She was a patron of the botanist and plant collector Frank Kingdon-Ward.[3]

After she created her garden and the death of her husband, she gave the gardens to the National Trust in 1957. They are regarded by Heritage Island as being one of the best gardens in the British Isles.[4]

A number of gifts received by Lady Londonderry from Queen Mary, Laura Mae Corrigan and Sir Philip Sassoon were auctioned at Sotheby's in 2012.[5]

Lady Londonderry also wrote or edited several books, among which are Henry Chaplin: A Memoir (1926), The Magic Ink-Pot (1928), Retrospect (1938) and Frances Anne: The Life and Times of Frances Anne, Marchioness of Londonderry, and Her Husband, Charles, Third Marquess of Londonderry (1958).

References

  1. ↑ Kershaw, Ian (2004). Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain's Road to War. Penguin. pp. 17–19, 65–6, 108, 128. ISBN 0-14-303607-6.
  2. ↑ National Trust: Mount Stewart House, Garden and Temple of the Winds
  3. ↑ "The Constant Gardener". The Australian.
  4. ↑ Heritage Ireland Newsletter, April 2006, p5
  5. ↑ "Magnificent jewels and noble jewels".

Further reading

External links