Susan Gough (1929-2005) first wife of 11th Duke of Marlborough

[Michael Rhodes]

Susan Mary Gough died at home, 27 January, 2005, aged 75. She was a
scion of the Hornby BLG family; descended from the 1st Earl of Dudley;
was the first wife of the current 11th Duke of Marlborough; and was
mother of the wayward heir, James, Marquess of Blandford.

She was born 19 October, 1929, as Susan Mary Hornby, daughter of
Michael Charles St. John Hornby (d. 1987), of Pusey House, Faringdon,
by his wife Nicolette Joan Ward (d. 1988, a granddaughter of the 1st
Earl of Dudley). She was a sister of Sir Simon Michael Hornby, sometime
chairman of WH Smith.

Susan was three times married. Her first - at St Margaret's
Westminster, on her 22nd birthday - one of the society events of 1951 -
was to John George Vanderbilt Henry (Sunny) Spencer-Churchill, styled
Marquess of Blandford, son and heir of the 10th Duke of Marlborough, of
Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. Her first husband had been an integral
member of the Clarence House set surrounding Princess Margaret, and he
was frequently mooted as a royal consort.

This marriage produced as son, John David Ivor, styled Earl of
Sunderland, born 17 Nov, 1952, for whom Princess Margaret stood
sponsor. The boy died in infancy; another son followed, 24 November,
1955, Charles James, styled Earl of Sunderland until his father
succeeded to the dukedom in 1972, and since when has been styled
Marquess of Blandford. A daughter, Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill
(now Lady Henrietta Gelber), was born in 1958.

The Blandfords divorced in 1960, and two years later she married, as
his first wife, the landowner Alan Cyril Heber-Percy (b. 1935), of
Eyford Knoll, Upper Slaughter, Gloucestershire, scion of the Dukes of
Northumberland, by whom she had a daughter, Larissa Anne Heber-Percy
(now Mrs Justin Hardy), born in 1968. Her second marriage also ended
in divorce, and she married thirdly, 1983, as his second wife, the
industrialist John Osborne Gough, MBE (b. 1932) son of Reginald Osborne
Gough. From this marriage she inherited two step-children, Suzannah
Gough, and Alistair Gough.

Thanksgiving Service at St Mary's Church, Buckland, Oxfordshire on
Friday 4 February, 2005.

Source: Daily Telegraph 29 Jan 2005

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