PALMER, 4th Lord (1951–2023)
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Lord Palmer obituary
Frugal ‘elected’ hereditary peer whose lost causes included trying to end tipping in restaurants, sell-by dates and bans on smoking
Money was no object when Manderston, near Duns in the Scottish Borders, was built in 1905 by Sir James “Lucky Jim” Miller, whose family’s wealth came from the sale of hemp and herrings to Russia.
Indeed, the architect John Kinross was told “it simply doesn’t matter” what the final bill amounted to as long as he created one of the finest stately homes in the country, with stables (described as “the finest in the country” by Horse & Hound), marble dairy, hand-crafted boathouse and the world’s only silver staircase, inspired by Madame de Pompadour’s staircase at the Petit Trianon in Versailles.
But by the time Adrian Palmer — Sir James’s great nephew on his mother’s side — and his wife took on the house and 1,500 acres of land in 1978, there was little left in the kitty, not least because his maternal grandfather, Major Hugh Bailie, still employed a butler, footman, chauffeur, at least four full-time gardeners and 17 farm staff.
Yet the Palmers not only kept the roof on but found a number of ways to modernise the farm and maintain and improve the 109-room house, opening it to the public throughout the summer, hosting commercial shooting parties and promoting it as a film location.
The latter did not always go smoothly. Allowing the house to be portrayed as Highgrove in an American CBS film about the marriage of the then Prince Charles and Princess Diana led to Palmer being expelled in 1996 from the Royal Company of Archers, the sovereign’s bodyguard in Scotland.
This came as a blow because Palmer, a member of the Huntley & Palmers biscuit family, was a staunch royalist and his father had been Lord Lieutenant for the Royal County of Berkshire.
On succeeding his uncle in 1990 … he sat as a crossbencher in the House of Lords and was well regarded … polling highly when elected as one of the 90 hereditary peers saved in 1999…
…Adrian Bailie Nottage Palmer was born in Reading, Berkshire, in 1951, the eldest son of Colonel the Hon Sir Gordon Palmer KCVO and his wife, Lorna (née Bailie). His father was the last chairman of Huntley & Palmers before Associated Biscuits (which included Peek Freans and Jacob’s) was sold to Nabisco in 1982.
The Palmer barony was created in 1933 to reward Sir Ernest Palmer — the first fellow of the Royal College of Music — for services to music. In 1948 it passed to Ernest’s son, Cecil, and two years later to Adrian’s uncle, Raymond, who became the third Lord Palmer but had no male heir…
…he had met Cornelia Wadham, who was social secretary to the wife of the British ambassador in Paris, and they were married in 1977. Shortly afterwards they took on Manderston at a time when the family was thinking of selling up… They had three children: Hugo, a racehorse trainer who runs the former footballer Michael Owen’s stables in Cheshire and now becomes the 5th Lord Palmer; Edwina, a lawyer working in M&A insurance; and George, CFO of a property group. His younger brother, Mark, is a newspaper journalist…
…His first marriage was dissolved in 2004. Two years later he married Loraine McMurrey, from Houston, Texas. That marriage ended in 2013…
Lord Palmer, landowner and crossbench peer, was born on October 8, 1951. He died of a stroke on July 10, 2023, aged 71
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lord-palmer-obituary-5vww3fdsc
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Davina Byrne
Robert Jewell
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Barony of Palmer in the Peerage of the United Kingdom The Lord Chancellor reported that Hugo Bailie Rohan Palmer had established his claim to the Barony of Palmer in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The Clerk of the Parliaments was accordingly directed to enter Lord Palmer on the register of hereditary peers maintained under Standing Order 9(4).
He is not yet on the Official Roll of the Baronetage in respect of the 1916 baronetcy