TOWNELEY, Sir Simon Peter Edmund Cosmo William (formerly KOCH DE GOOREYND) 1921-2022
Richard R
sarac...@googlemail.com
colinp
sven_me...@web.de
Henry W
Richard R
Robert Jewell
S. S.
colinp
He wrote about Venetian opera and died ‘fortified by the rites of the Holy Church, and a partridge and a bottle of champagne’
Sir Simon Towneley, who has died aged 100, was a Lancashire landowner of recusant Catholic descent and a long-serving lord lieutenant of the county. He was also a distinguished musicologist – and the elder brother of the journalist Sir Peregrine Worsthorne.
The Towneley family has held estates near Burnley since the early 13th century – and as recusants who gave shelter to Catholic priests were condemned as a family of “unusual perversity” by Lord Burleigh in the reign of Elizabeth I. Seated in the part-medieval stronghold of Towneley Hall, they were also Royalists and supporters of the Jacobite cause.
Simon Towneley was a gentleman-scholar of great charm, intellectual energy and cultural breadth, devoted to the best interests of his land, tenants, county and church. He was also, as it happened, more Belgian than English by birth. His father was Col Alexander “Lexie” Koch de Gooreynd, a banker of Belgian origins who had served in the Irish Guards in the first world war, and his maternal grandfather was Col Robert Reyntiens, ADC to King Leopold II.
The last male Towneley heir having expired in 1877, it was through Simon’s maternal grandmother – born Lady Alice Bertie, daughter of the 7th Earl of Abingdon and grand-daughter of Col Charles Towneley (1803-1876) – that the Towneley inheritance descended to Simon by a winding path worthy of a Victorian novel.
These complexities were reflected in his changing surname. He was born Simon Peter Edmund Cosmo William Koch de Gooreynd on December 14 1921 at his parents’ house in Belgrave Square, where the Polish maestro Paderewski was giving a piano recital at the time and Simon’s mother Priscilla was asked to give birth as quietly as she could.
In 1923, his father changed the family name to Worsthorne (after the Towneley estate village) when he stood unsuccessfully for parliament. Simon’s younger brother Peregrine, the future editor of The Sunday Telegraph, was born in that year and remained Worsthorne all his life (he died in 2020), though their father in due course reverted to Koch de Gooreynd.
After her marriage to Lexie ended in divorce, Priscilla – later a London county councillor and mental health activist – was remarried in 1933 to the formidable Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England throughout the interwar period, who took little interest in his stepsons. The boys spent many school holidays with their grandmother Lady Alice at Dyneley, a Victorian mansion which became the main house of the Lancashire estate after Towneley Hall was sold to Burnley corporation.
When it was certain that Simon would in due course inherit, he hyphenated himself as Towneley-Worsthorne – finally simplified by royal licence in 1955, the year of his marriage, to Towneley....
By 1954 Towneley had also come into his landed inheritance and the following year he resigned from Oxford to take up his life’s work as steward of an estate consisting largely of poor hill farms overlooking industrial Burnley – a view he liked to compare romantically to the Bay of Naples.
He and his wife Mary made Dyneley a lively family home, adding an oratory where Mass was said on Sundays by a Jesuit priest from Stonyhurst in pre-Reformation vestments....
Driven by duty, Towneley was successively a Lancashire county councillor, deputy lieutenant and high sheriff before serving as lord lieutenant from 1976 to 1996. He was also honorary colonel of the Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry and a council member of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was appointed KCVO in 1994.
Reflecting his wide-ranging cultural enthusiasms, he was a trustee of the British Museum and the Historic Churches Preservation Trust, chairman of Northern Ballet Theatre and a director of Granada Television. He was a member of the council of Manchester University and a governor and Companion of the Royal Northern College of Music....
He married, in 1955, his second cousin Mary – a daughter of Cuthbert Fitzherbert, vice chairman of Barclays Bank, and a noted equestrian who is commemorated by a 40-mile Pennine bridleway named (at the suggestion of the Princess Royal) the Mary Towneley Loop.
Mary died in 2001; Sir Simon is survived by their six daughters and a son. The third daughter is the author K M Grant and the fifth, Cosima, is the current mayor of Burnley.
His son Peregrine’s eulogy for the funeral Mass ended: “He died fortified by the rites of the Holy Church, and a partridge and a bottle of champagne.”
Sir Simon Towneley, born December 14 1921, died November 11 2022
rcb1
Richard R
Sir Simon Towneley obituary
Scion of an ancient Catholic family, long-serving lord lieutenant of Lancashire and creator of the Northern Ballet Theatre
A descendant of the last man to be hanged, drawn and quartered in Britain, Sir Simon Towneley’s recusant antecedents — Catholics who refused to attend Church of England services and gave shelter to priests — were, according to Lord Burghley, treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I, a family of “more than usual perversity”...
...Simon Peter Edmund Cosmo William Koch de Gooreynd was born in 1921 at his parents’ house in Belgrave Square. Because the pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski was giving a recital there at the time his mother, Priscilla Reyntiens, the granddaughter of the Earl of Abingdon, was asked to “give birth as quietly as possible”. His Belgian-born father Alexander “Lexie” Koch de Gooreynd had been educated at Eton before becoming a colonel in the Irish Guards.
When standing as a parliamentary candidate, Simon’s father found his name a handicap and adopted the name of Worsthorne, taken from a Lancashire village that was part of the family estate. It was the name his younger brother, Sir Peregrine, kept throughout his distinguished journalistic career, most notably as the editor of The Sunday Telegraph (obituary, October 5, 2020). Both boys were brought up by their mother who subsequently went on to marry Montagu Norman, a governor of the Bank of England...
...Upon marrying his second cousin Mary Fitzherbert in 1955, he changed his surname to Towneley, courtesy of a royal licence. Their histories were not only linked because the grandmothers of the bride and bridegroom were sisters but also because, in 1589, both John Towneley and Sir Thomas Fitzherbert had been cruelly persecuted for their Catholic faith. Settling at Dyneley Hall, the family seat in Lancashire, the couple built the smallest oratory in Britain. Mass would be said in it every Sunday by a Jesuit priest wearing the pre-Reformation vestments bequeathed by the Abbot of Whalley at the Dissolution of the Monasteries...
The couple had one son and six daughters. Peregrine is chairman of the BMS Group. Of the daughters, the third, Katharine, is now better known as the successful writer Katie Grant, and it is to his fifth daughter, Cosima, that the mantle of community service has now passed. A long-serving local councillor, she is the mayor of Burnley.
According to the eulogy his son gave at his funeral, Sir Simon died “fortified by the rites of the Holy Church and a partridge and a bottle of champagne”.
Sir Simon Towneley, musicologist, was born on December 14, 1921. He died on November 11, 2022, aged 100
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sir-simon-towneley-obituary-gc0mrrmcx