FARQUHAR, Capt Ian Walter LVO 1945-2024

[Richard R]

He was s of Sir Peter Walter FARQUHAR 6th Bt 1904-86 and as her 2^nd h Elizabeth Evelyn 1907-83 d of Lt-Col Francis Cecil Albert HURT 1878-1930 sometime head of that gentry family f/o Alderwasley and Isabel Clara 1881-1937 d of George Herbert STRUTT 1854-1928 sometime head of that gentry family of Belper and his 1^st w Edith Adela BALGUY 1855-97 scion of that gentry family f/o Duffield. He m 1972 (div 1992, date not in DPB online) Pamela Jane b 1948 d of (Charles) Frank CHAFER b c1925 of Pickering, Yorks by his 1941 m reg Q2 Yorks to Margaret OWEN b c1925, and had three daus as below.

News of his dau’s Ros(ann)e’s marriage posted here: https://groups.google.com/g/peerage-news/c/6wLn7rFQ9z8/m/eVu2uRcLAQAJ

Obit in the Times of 9 March 2024:

Captain Ian Farquhar obituary: equerry to the Queen Mother and close friend of King Charles

Distinguished master of hounds who was known as Britain’s leading foxhunter

As a child Ian Farquhar kept a pet fox called Vicky who would curl up by his side in the nursery.
Decades later the former cavalry officer and equerry to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother would develop into Britain’s most distinguished foxhunter. Known to all as “the Captain”, Farquhar led from the front, galloping across the English countryside in the severest of weather, hurdling fences and ditches in pursuit of his quarry.

Among those trailing in his wake on the Beaufort hunt in Gloucestershire might be his close friend the Prince of Wales (now the King), Camilla Parker Bowles (now the Queen), the Princess Royal, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, along with a group of female admirers who became known facetiously as the “bitch pack”, and paparazzi or hunt saboteurs disguised as foliage.

…Ian Walter Farquhar was born in Turnworth, north Dorset, in 1945. His father, Sir Peter Walter Farquhar, was a baronet and his mother was Elizabeth Evelyn (née Hurt). Farquhar Sr was a cavalry officer and commander of the 3rd Hussars who was twice wounded in the Second World War and awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Bar. He was also a doyen of the Portman Hunt in Dorset and a hound breeder of some note…

…Farquhar entered Sandhurst for officer training straight from school and was recruited to the Queen’s Own Hussars at White’s in Mayfair. Several glasses of port into the interview the colonel asked the teenager why he was there. “You are interviewing me for the regiment, colonel,” Farquhar replied. “Very good. That will be fine. Give your father my best.”…

…He was described by his great friend and fellow cavalry officer Andrew Parker Bowles as “wild as a hawk in his youth”, to which some in their mutual acquaintance might have replied “it takes one to know one”.

Now in the rank of captain, Farquhar served as an equerry to the Queen Mother between 1971 and 1973. Her Majesty once pointedly presented an alarm clock to the man responsible for ensuring that she fulfilled her busy schedule. They remained good friends until her death…

…he had married [in 1972] Pamela Jane Chafer. They divorced in 1992 as a result of his extramarital activity, but were later partly reconciled and remained friends. She survives him along with their three children: Emma, a photographer, who once disrupted Tony Blair’s speech at the Labour Party conference to protest against the government’s proposed ban on foxhunting; Victoria; and Rose, who was reported to be Prince William’s “first love” during a summer romance after the prince had finished his A-levels at Eton in 2000…

…He developed a firm friendship with Prince Charles long before he became King and was increasingly involved in the workings of his estate at Highgrove. The Farquhars moved into a cottage close to Highgrove called Happy Lands. And as he and Charles contemplated the end of their respective marriages, they would spend long evenings in the local pub together…

…In 1990 it was revealed that he was having an affair with Charlotte Monckton, an heiress who was at the time one of Britain’s richest women after Queen Elizabeth II. Having first met over the stirrup cups, they moved in together but the relationship did not last.

In his final years Farquhar lived in a farmhouse on the Highgrove estate filled with memorabilia from a lifetime of hunting. To mark his retirement, the Flying Monk Brewery in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, launched a beer in his honour. Many pints of Old Captain were downed in his honour and the Captain (who else?) pulled the first pint.

Ian Farquhar, master of hounds, was born on December 11, 1945. He died of undisclosed causes on March 6, 2024, aged 78

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/captain-ian-farquhar-obituary-equerry-to-the-queen-mother-and-close-friend-of-king-charles-wbvkdvjzm

 

 

[S R Eglesfield]

Debrett's Peerage shows the late Capt Farquhar's former wife, née Pamela Jane ("Pammie-Jane") CHAFER, as the daughter of Charles L CHAFER, and it seems clear that her father was, in fact, Charles Littlewood CHAFER (1918 - 21 VII 1999), Master of the Derwent Hunt for thirty years, and that her mother was his first wife (married 1941), Elsie OWEN (3 VII 1919 - 1995?).

 

Mrs Farquhar was the second of three Chafer daughters. The eldest, Angela Littlewood CHAFER (born 6 VIII 1943), was married on 8 June 1968 to Peter Ernest Roylance VAUX (born 25 IX 1939), of that landed gentry (and former brewing) family. The youngest, Sally Anne CHAFER (born 3 VII 1954), is the wife (marriage registered Q1 1975 - Scarborough) of Neil Marius Layard EWART (born 19 VII 1949).

 

Neil Ewart is the younger son of William John EWART, MC (26 IV 1920 - 1991) and his wife (married 10 III 1945), Vivien Anne LAYARD (10 VI 1920 - 2014). William John Ewart was himself the son of William Herbert Lee EWART, CBE (6 IX 1881 - 14 III 1953), High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1942, and his wife (married 1911), Katherine Cassandra GASSIOT (c.1882/3 - ?).

 

William Herbert Lee Ewart was the son of William Lee EWART (26 VII 1836 -6 XII 1892) and his wife (married 3 XII 1874), Louisa DOWDING (1844 - 14 I 1930). William Lee EWART was himself the only son of William EWART, MP (1 V 1798 - 23 I 1869) and his first cousin and wife (married 15 XII 1829), Mary Anne LEE (1805 - 1837).

 

William Ewart was MP (Whig, 1828-30, Radical 1830-59 and Liberal 1859-68) for Bletchingley, 1828-30, for Liverpool, 1830-37, for Wigan, 1839-41 and for Dumfries Burghs, 1841-68. His brother, Joseph Christopher EWART (1799 - 14 XII 1868), was MP for Liverpool, 1855-65 (Whig, 1855-59, Liberal 1859-65). The brothers were sons of William EWART (1763 - 8 X 1823), the Liverpool merchant who was the godfather of William Ewart GLADSTONE, the Prime Minister.

 

Louisa Dowding was a sister of Arthur John Caswall DOWDING (23 XI 1848 - 2 III 1932), father of the 1st Baron Dowding.

 

I could not immediately find the above-mentioned Ewart family in Burke's Family Index, but have now found them under Ewart of Craigcleuch in the 1921 edition of Burke's Landed Gentry (see https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_Genealogical_and_Heraldic_History_of_t.html?id=2v8-AQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y). One of their number was created a baronet in 1910, but the title became extinct on his death in 1928.