BARHAM, David George Wilfred 1926-2022

[Richard R]

From the Telegraph & Times of 24 June 2022: BARHAM David G.W. JP, DL, of Hole Park, Rolvenden, Kent on 19th June 2022, aged 95. Beloved husband of Catherine for 67 years, father of Jennifer, William, Edward and Robert, grandfather of nine and great-grandfather of five. A countryman who loved his estate, gardens and trees and served his country in numerous ways, High Sheriff 1974. A life well lived of kindness and generosity. Funeral Service at St Mary the Virgin, Rolvenden at 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday 6th July and afterwards at Hole Park. All welcome.

He m 1955 reg Q4 Kent Catharine Margaret b 1936 reg Q2 Surrey d of Rixon BUCKNALL 1903-75 by his 1933 m to Margaret Elizabeth MORLEY 1907-84, and had a son (Edward George b 1962 he m 1990 Clare Catherine b 1966 d of Oliver TURNBULL 1933-2002 (gs of 9th Earl of STAMFORD 1850-1910) and Vivian Helen 1937-2021 d of Sir Herbert INGRAM 3rd Bt 1912-80 and Jane Lindsay PALMER-TOMKINSON 1913-89 scion of the TOMKINSON gentry family of Willington Hall and scion of the vast ABEL SMITH gentry family, and has issue) and a dau (Jennifer C. b c 1957 reg Q1 Kent, has m twice and has issue from 1st m to a gt gs of Sir Edward MANN 1st Bt 1854-1943, her 2nd h is a gs of 2nd Baron WYFOLD 1880-1942).

[colinp]

Obit in Daily Telegraph 16 Sept 2022 -  David Barham, farmer and landowner who revitalised his family’s house and estate, Hole Park in Kent – obituary (telegraph.co.uk)

David Barham, farmer and landowner who revitalised his family’s house and estate, Hole Park in Kent – obituary

Taking over when he was only 21, he restored the house and established award-winning woodlands

David Barham, who has died aged 95, restored and remodelled his family house and estate, Hole Park, in the Weald of Kent.

The estate had been the ancestral home of the Gibbon and subsequently Gibbon Moneypenny families until Thomas Gibbon Moneypenny MP was bankrupted in the middle of the 19th century; it was acquired by his mortgagor, James Morrison MP, at that time one of the richest men in England with the largest single acreage.

But his son Frank did not enjoy the prospect of living there and it was sold in 1911 to Colonel Arthur Barham who, with his father Sir George Barham and brother Titus, had a controlling influence in the dairy trade of the 19th and early 20th century through their family businesses Express Dairies and the Dairy Supply Company, latterly the dominant arm of United Dairies.

Hole Park was a pseudo-Elizabethan house built in 1837 around a Georgian core, and Arthur Barham devoted his time to improving the house and reassembling the estate, as well as creating the now renowned gardens, one of the first in the National Garden Scheme, which began in 1927. The house was requisitioned during the Second World War; then, skipping a generation, the estate was offered to Arthur’s grandson David.

David George Wilfrid Barham had been born on October 6 1926, one of six children of Arthur’s surviving son, Harold, whose brother Wilfrid had been killed at Ypres in 1915; his mother was Dulcie, née Taylor. The family lived in Bourne End in Buckinghamshire....

He served as High Sheriff of Kent in 1974 and subsequently Deputy Lieutenant. He was a JP and had active roles in local government, as well as the with the Country Land and Business Association, the National Farmers’ Union and numerous other trusts and bodies. After 43 years as custodian of the family home, he handed over to the next generation – his son Edward – and moved out to a house on the edge of the estate.

David Barham married, in 1955, Catherine Bucknall; she survives him with their daughter and three sons. His ashes were spread around the obelisk that had been erected in 2011 to commemorate a century of the family at Hole Park.

David Barham, born October 6 1926, died June 17 2022