Sir Ralph Verney, 5th Baronet
Major Sir Ralph Bruce Verney, 5th Baronet, KBE, DL (18 January 1915 – 17 August 2001) was a British Army officer, local politician and landowner, who served as Chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council from 1980 to 1983.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Military career
3 Conservation and public work
4 Personal life
5 References
Early life
Verney was the son of Sir Harry Verney, 4th Baronet and Lady Rachel Catherine Bruce, the daughter of Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin. He was educated at Canford School and Balliol College, Oxford, from where he graduated in 1937.[1] He then began his training as an accountant.
Military career
Following the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1940 he was commissioned into the Royal Buckinghamshire Yeomanry.[2] He served as an instructor at Catterick Garrison and was later deployed to India with the Berkshire Yeomanry. He saw active service in the liberation of British Malaya in 1945. He ended the war with the rank of Major.[3]
Conservation and public work
After returning from the Far East, Verney began a major restoration project on his family seat, Claydon House, which had been occupied by schools during the war. In 1957 he gifted the house and 7,000-acre estate to the National Trust, on the understanding that he and his family would always be able to live at the property. Between 1960 and 1996 Verney was Chairman of the Radcliffe Trust.[4]
In 1980 he became Chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council, and used the NCC to promote the designation of some 4,000 locations as "sites of special scientific interest" under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, often against opposition from farmers and other interested parties. Verney's unpopularity among some in the landed element of the Conservative Party led to him not being reappointed by the government when his term expired in 1983.[5]
For 30 years Verney was a trustee of the Ernest Cook Trust. He was a member of Buckinghamshire County Council and was closely involved both in the planning of the new town of Milton Keynes and the creation of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Chilterns. He served as High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1957, was a Deputy Lieutenant for the county from 1960 to 1965, and held the office of Vice-Lord-Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire between 1965 and 1984.[6] He was High Steward of Buckingham in 1966, and was invested as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1974.[7] That same year he succeeded to his father's baronetcy.
Personal life
He married Mary Vestey, daughter of Percy Charles Vestey and Dorothy Emmeline Johnston, on 7 July 1948. Together they had four children.[8]
SIR Ralph Verney, 5th Bt, who has died aged 86, was a country gentleman with a passion for land and forest conservation and a wide range of charitable and artistic interests; his family seat, Claydon House in Buckinghamshire, which he gave to the National Trust in 1957, contains some of the most perfect rococo decoration in England and the bedroom where Florence Nightingale, Verney's great-great aunt, spent her final years.
Verney believed strongly that man's role in relation to land was one of stewardship for the future rather than outright ownership. He especially loved trees. His philosophy was put into practice not only on his own extensive estates at Claydon and in North Wales, but in his roles as chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council, as a Forestry Commissioner, as president of the Country Landowners' Association, and as a civic leader in Buckinghamshire.
He was chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council from 1980 to 1983, at a time when wildlife habitats were under increasing threat from intensive farming methods. The NCC was active in promoting the designation of some 4,000 "sites of special scientific interest" under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, often against opposition from farmers and other interested parties.
The issue came to a head with the case of a 2,500-acre wetland site at West Sedgemoor in Somerset, which was designated despite objections from the local authority, landowners and influential Conservative MPs in the area, one of whom protested that Sir Ralph had apparently been unable "to keep his zealots and minions in any sort of check". Verney was hanged in effigy by angry farmers, and contrary to expectations was not re-appointed by the Conservative government for a second three-year term.
What was effectively his sacking was regarded by environmental groups as a victory for economic interests over sound principles of conservation.
Ralph Bruce Verney was born on January 18 1915. His father Sir Harry, the 4th baronet, was Liberal MP for Buckingham and junior agriculture minister in the Asquith administration; his mother Lady Rachel was a daughter of the 9th Earl of Elgin.
The Verneys have owned land at Claydon since the 15th century. Among Sir Ralph's forebears were the Elizabethan pirate Sir Francis Verney who had "turned Turk" in the early 1600s, becoming a Barbary corsair, and the royalist Sir Edmund who lost his hand while carrying the king's standard at the battle of Edgehill while his two sons fought on Cromwell's side.
The family's Jacobean mansion was rebuilt by the 2nd Earl Verney between 1757 and 1771 to a design partially by Thomas Robinson of Yorkshire, which incorporated exquisite chinoiserie woodcarvings by Luke Lightfoot. The cost of the scheme ruined Lord Verney, who died penniless as well as childless.
The estate passed to a niece. The baronetcy was created in 1818 not for a Verney but for a relation by marriage, General Sir Harry Calvert, whose eldest son, also Harry, changed his surname to Verney in 1827 in order to inherit Claydon.
The younger Harry wanted to marry Florence Nightingale - his advocacy in the House of Commons for her reforms led to him being dubbed "the Member for Miss Nightingale" - but Florence spurned him and he married her sister Parthenope instead. Florence nevertheless retired from her nursing work to live at Claydon until her death, aged 90, in 1910.
Ralph was educated at Canford and Balliol, where he read History and was a keen college actor. He began training as an accountant until the eve of war in 1939 when he joined the Buckinghamshire Yeomanry. He served as an instructor at Catterick and later sailed for India with the Berkshire Yeomanry, taking part in the invasion of Malaya in 1945 and the liberation of PoW camps there.
On demobilisation, Verney returned to the task of reviving the dilapidated house and 7,000-acre estate at Claydon, which his father had handed over to him when he was 21 but which had been occupied by schools during the war.
Having completed the restoration, he gave the house to the National Trust in 1957 with an endowment of £24,000 on the understanding that the family would always be able to live there; he and his wife lived in a wing of the house until 1994. He also inherited, through a 19th century marriage with the Hay-Williams family, an estate beside the Menai Straits in Anglesey, where he was able to establish a site of special scientific interest.
Verney was chairman from 1960 to 1996 of the Radcliffe Trust, a foundation dedicated to astronomy which had been created under the will of the royal physician John Radcliffe in Oxford in 1713. In modern times the Trust owned the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere, at Pretoria, but as more powerful telescopes were built elsewhere Verney took the view that the Trust no longer had the means to make a major contribution to the science. In 1974 the observatory was sold, and the Trust was transformed into a grant-making body for the encouragement of music and crafts.
In addition Verney was a trustee for 30 years of the Ernest Cook Trust, which derived income from traditional country estates and used it to support young musicians, artists and craftsmen; Verney brought wisdom and new ideas both to the management of the estates and the distribution of grants.
Verney was especially active in his native Buckinghamshire. He was a county councillor, and was closely involved both in the planning of the new town of Milton Keynes and the creation of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Chilterns. He led campaigns to stop the building of a third London airport at Wing and to replace elm trees across the Vale of Aylesbury destroyed by Dutch elm disease. He was a trustee of Chequers, the prime minister's country retreat, a founder trustee of the Buckinghamshire Historic Churches Trust, and a council member of the University of Buckingham. He was a deputy lieutenant and former High Sheriff of the county, and High Steward of Buckingham.
Verney was a founder of the Timber Growers' Association and the Game Fair, a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and a speaker and delegate at conferences on conservancy topics at home and abroad.
Ralph Verney was also a prominent figure in the world of freemasonry; he was grand superintendent for Buckinghamshire for 25 years, and a provincial grand master from 1970 to 1976. In the City of London he was prime warden of the Worshipful Company of Dyers in 1969.
He was knighted for his public works in 1974, and inherited the baronetcy from his father in the same year.
Verney was a welcoming host, with civilised and knowledgable tastes. He kept a fine library and an excellent cellar and was particularly proud to have been appointed a chevalier de tastevin of Clos Vougeot in Burgundy.
In 1960 he and his wife - a talented pianist - instigated an annual Claydon concert series, an early example of the fashion for music in country house settings which The Daily Telegraph called "as much an experience for the concert enthusiast as visiting Glyndebourne is for the opera lover".
He married in 1948 Mary Vestey; they had a son and three daughters. His son Edmund, born in 1950, now succeeds to the baronetcy.
He is married to Mary Vestey.
They got married on July 7, 1948, he was 33 years old.
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wikipedia
Find a Grave, database en afbeeldingen (https://nl.findagrave.com/memorial/171911939/ralph-bruce-verney : geopend 23 Oktober 2021), gedenkplekpagina voor Ralph Bruce Verney (1915–2001), Find a Grave-gedenkpleknr. 171911939, citaat All Saints Churchyard, Middle Claydon, Aylesbury Vale District, Buckinghamshire, England ; Onderhouden door ColinA (bijdrager 48094681) .