George Child Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey

George Francis Child-Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey (15 February 1910 – 9 August 1998), was an English peer and banker from the Villiers family. Lord Jersey gave one of the family seats, Osterley Park, to the British nation in the late 1940s. He was a descendant of King Henry VII of England

Early life He was the son of George Child-Villiers, 8th Earl of Jersey, and the former Lady Cynthia Almina Constance Mary Needham. He had three younger siblings, Lady Joan Child Villiers (wife of David Colville), Edward Mansel Child Villiers (who married Barbara Mary Frampton and, secondly, to Princess Maria Gloria Pignatelli Aragona Cortez, only daughter of Prince Antonia Pignatelli Aragona Cortez, Duke of Terranova), and Lady Ann Child Villiers (the wife of Maj. Alexander Henry Elliot).

He was educated at Eton College before attending Christ Church, Oxford. Lord Jersey was a clerk with Glyn, Mills & Co. in 1932 and served as chairman of Wallace Brothers Sassoon Bank (taken over by the Standard Chartered Bank in 1976).

The 9th Earl was responsible for the remodelling of the family seat, Middleton Park in Oxfordshire, and employed Edwin Lutyens as an architect. When he tried to give Middleton to the National Trust, they refused on the grounds that the house had been remodelled by Lutyens – whose houses they now seek particularly. The 9th Earl gave Osterley Park in Hounslow to the nation in the late 1940s; he said of that house, "it took a trained staff of 12 to bring me a boiled egg in the morning, and the egg was always cold by the time it got to me!"

Personal life

Lord Jersey was married three times and twice divorced. He married his first wife, Patricia Richards (1914–2017) at St Margaret's, Westminster, on 12 January 1932. She was the only child of Kenneth Richards, of Cowcumbala, New South Wales, Australia. Before the Countess obtained a divorce from him in London in 1937, they were the parents of one child: who married Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 6th Earl of Minto, in 1952. They divorced in 1965 and she married Hon. John Douglas Stuart (second son of James Stuart, 1st Viscount Stuart of Findhorn), in 1969. They also divorced and she married Hon. James Donald Diarmid Ogilvy (son of David Ogilvy, 12th Earl of Airlie) in 1980. They divorced in 1946 without having had children together.

His third and last wife was Bianca Luciana Adriana Mottironi (d. 2005), whom he married on 16 October 1947. She was the eldest daughter of furniture maker Enrico Mottironi of Via Goffredo Casalis in Turin, Italy. They had three children: before he lost his hearing suddenly and died in 1991, aged just 39.

Lord Jersey moved to Radier Manor in Jersey, where he lived with his third wife until his death on 9 August 1998. As his eldest son George died of a heart attack on 19 March 1998, several months before the Earl's death, his grandson, William, succeeded as the 10th Earl. His widow, the dowager Countess of Jersey, died in March 2005.

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