BRIGGS, Mrs Michael (Isabel Diana nee COLEGATE) 1931-2023
Richard R
She was d of Sir
Arthur COLEGATE 1884-1956 sometime
head of that gentry family of Hill Grove
and Winifred Mary 1888-1955 d of Sir William Henry Arthington WORSLEY 3rd
Bt 1861-1936 (gf of Katharine Duchess
of KENT) and Augusta Mary Chivers 1863-1913 d of Edward Chivers BOWER 1826-96 sometime head of that gentry family of Broxholme and Amelia
Mary 1835-95 d of William Bennet MARTIN
1796-1847 sometime head of the MARTIN-EDMUNDS
gentry family of Worsbro’ Hall and Augusta Marcia CHALONER 1809-59. She m
1953 Michael Fenwick 1926-2017 s of Dennis Brook BRIGGS 1894-1964 by his 1923 m
reg Q4 Kent to Grace Mary Davey LUKE 1899-1995, and had two sons and a dau as below.
Obit in the Times of 23 March 2023:
E X T R A C T
Isabel Colegate obituary
Calm and detached author whose novel The Shooting Party was adapted for the big screen with James Mason and John Gielgud
…Born in Lincolnshire in 1931, Isabel Diana Colegate was the daughter of Sir Arthur Colegate, a Conservative MP. Her mother Winifred (née Worsley) was the daughter of a baronet and widow of an Army officer who was killed in the First World War. Isabel was educated at Runton Hill School, Norfolk, and spent her summers at Hovingham Hall, the Worsley family seat in Yorkshire.
In 1953 Colegate married Michael Briggs, a commodity broker, and when they settled in Bath they helped to transform the area from a place “where the young cannot live and the old cannot die” into somewhere much livelier and more forward looking. Michael died in 2017 and she is survived by their two sons, Barnaby and Joshua, and a daughter Emily, who as a four-year-old in 1961 was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Isabel’s cousin Katharine Worsley to the Duke of Kent at York Minster, where a charming photograph of her made the front page of The Times…
…She and Michael bought and moved into Midford, a dilapidated Gothic castle near Bath. Years later, after their daughter and two sons had grown up and married, they sold it, after making various improvements and additions, at a large profit. They did the same with a farmhouse in Tuscany…
…After selling Midford Castle they retired to the village of Mells, not far away, where they successfully adapted an old house to their needs, and spent the evening of their lives in peaceful contrast to the often hectic years of their youthful achievements…
Isabel Colegate FRSL, author, was born on September 10, 1931. She died on March 12, 2023, aged 91
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/isabel-colegate-obituary-3jf6jzmfs