COBBOLD, Rt Hon Baroness (Christine Elizabeth nee STUCLEY) 1940-2024
Richard R
E X T R A C T
Lady Cobbold obituary, chatelaine of Knebworth House
Bohemian aristocrat who helped her husband to preserve his family seat with a string of celebrated rock festivals
… In 1969, she and her flamboyant husband David, later the 2nd Lord Cobbold, had begged to open his mother’s dilapidated family seat Knebworth House and its 250-acre park to the public to help with the running costs. His parents — Cameron (Kim), the 1st Baron Cobbold, a long-serving governor of the Bank of England who became chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth, and Lady Hermione (née Bulwer-Lytton) — had no time to keep the house going and it needed substantial restoration work, with a 14-acre “wilderness garden, extensive dry rot, fungus and every sort of beetle”.
The young Cobbolds were then in the vanguard of historic house owners sharing their heritage, but with far less money than rivals such as Longleat and Woburn Abbey. The struggle to keep the estate afloat amid wildly fluctuating fortunes dominated the next 35 years of the Cobbolds’ lives, but they approached each setback and windfall with humorous stoicism…
… When in 2000 the couple handed on the estate, by now protected by a charitable conservation trust, to their eldest son Henry and his American wife Martha (née Boone), it was a thriving business that had welcomed millions of visitors to events ranging from medieval banquets and Wild West reenactments to wedding receptions and athletics meets.
Lady Cobbold was born Christina Elizabeth Stucley in 1940 in north Devon, into a clan of country squires. Her father, Sir Dennis Stucley, who owned both the fortified gatehouse Affeton Castle near Bideford and the imposing Hartland Abbey, hunted four days a week and founded the Taw and Torridge pack. Chryssie and her four siblings loved hunting on Exmoor on their shaggy ponies, prawning, baiting lobster pots and catching moles for their skins, which her father sold to a London furrier.
… Following an education at Southover Manor School in East Sussex, where art and needlework trumped academic pursuits, she started work as a pattern-cutter for Worth at £3 a week. This genteel drudgery was leavened by a ritzy round of debutante dances and house parties. A parade of young “debs’ delights” were intrigued by her English rose looks and enigmatic smile, which concealed a sharp wit and wicked sense of humour. When she was invited to David Cobbold’s 21st birthday party at Knebworth, she knew almost no one and, feeling self-conscious, fell asleep in a fishing cottage beside the lake — until David woke her at dawn to suggest a romantic, mist-shrouded row. As she later recorded: “I was glad I had agreed to come after all.”…
The Cobbolds’ four children survive her: Henry, the 3rd Lord Cobbold, a former Hollywood screenwriter and keen naturist, is Knebworth’s current custodian; Peter manages a property rental business in Spain; Richard is the director of an international tech company; and Rosina is an artist and alternative education pioneer. Lady Cobbold is also survived by the Ugandan brothers Danny and Harry Matovu, whom she and her husband informally adopted. They were two of Henry’s closest friends at Eton whose parents had suffered persecution under Idi Amin, and who went on to become successful barristers.
After handing over Knebworth to the next generation, the Cobbolds moved to a house nearby where Chryssie cared for her husband as he faced Parkinson’s disease. When he died [in 2022] she ordered a coffin decorated with the artwork from his favourite Pink Floyd album and erected a memorial bench beside his grave in Knebworth garden inscribed: “See you on the Dark Side of the Moon”.
Lady Cobbold, chatelaine of Knebworth House, was born on April 25, 1940. She died of pancreatic cancer on April 7, 2024, aged 83
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lady-cobbold-k7755bxjh
The Group’s May 2022 post reporting the death of Lord Cobbold: https://groups.google.com/g/peerage-news/c/XxqHPEiFB5c/m/6QeVaAkDBgAJ
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Sir George Stucley BUCK, 1858 STUCLEY, of Affeton Castle and Hartland Abbey, cr Baronet 1859 (17 Aug 1812-13 Mar 1900); m.1st 22 Dec 1835 Lady Elisabeth O'Brien (d.9 May 1870); m.2nd 31 Jan 1872 Louisa Granville (d.18 Nov 1913)
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Sir Hugh Nicholas Granville, 4th Bt. (22 Jun 1873-25 Oct 1956); m.6 Feb 1902 Gladys Bankes (d.21 Mar 1950)
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Sir Dennis Frederick Bankes, 5th Bt. (29 Oct 1907-17 Sep 1983); m.5 Jan 1932 Hon. Sheila Margaret Warwick Bampfylde (26 Oct 1912-12 Jul 1996), dau of 4th Lord Poltimore by Cynthia Rachel Lascelles, of the Earls of Harewood
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Christine Elizabeth (25 Apr 1940-7 Apr 2024); m.7 Jan 1961 David Antony Fromanteel Cobbold, later Lytton Cobbold, 2nd Lord Cobbold (14 Jul 1937-9 May 2022)