Tim Westoll

James Westoll DL (26 July 1918 – 7 February 1999), known as Tim Westoll, was an English barrister, country landowner, politician, ornithologist, and racehorse owner.

He was baptised and registered as James Westoll, but from childhood was always known as Tim. The Westolls were a Sunderland shipping family, but a year after Westoll's birth in 1918 his father bought a sporting estate in Cumberland, near the Solway Firth, and he was brought up and spent his adult life there. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 Westoll joined the Border Regiment and was posted to the coast of Kent. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 11 February 1940. His battalion was part of 15th Scottish Division, and took part in the D-Day landings and the liberation of Europe, taking him as far as the Baltic Sea. He was Mentioned in Despatches on 4 April 1946 and retired the service at the end of the war with the rank of acting major.

In 1946, Westoll married Sylvia Jane, the youngest daughter of Sir Fairfax Luxmoore (1876–1944), a Lord Justice of Appeal, and they had four children.

Elected to Cumberland County Council as an independent, he became Chairman of the Council in 1958, continuing in the role until the council came to an end in 1974. In 1965, the Manchester Water Authority applied for permission to extract water from Ullswater, which would have changed the landscape significantly. Westoll took a legal battle all the way to the House of Lords, winning it in an early victory for the environmental lobby. In the 1970s, after Cumberland County Council was abolished, the new county council proved to be more divided by party politics, and although Westoll disliked the new working atmosphere he was chosen as the first Chairman of the new authority. High Sheriff of Cumberland (1964) and Master of the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers (1983). He was also chairman of Carlisle Racecourse and a director of Cumberland Newspapers. On Sundays, he played the organ in the parish church of Kirkandrews-on-Eden, and died on 7 February 1999, a few hours after doing so.

At Carlisle Racecourse, a race called the Tim Westoll Memorial Maiden Stakes, run over six furlongs, was established in his memory.

Honours Officer of the Order of Saint John, 1969, promoted to Knight, 1983 Honorary Doctor of Laws of the University of Leeds, 1984 Cumberland county president of the St John Ambulance Brigade