COLLIN, Lady Clarissa (nee DUNCOMBE) 1938-2021
Richard R
She was d of 3rd & last Earl of FEVERSHAM 1906-63 and Lady Anne Dorothy WOOD 1910-95 d of 1st Earl of HALIFAX 1881-1959 and Lady Dorothy Evelyn Augusta ONSLOW 1885-1976 d of 4th Earl of ONSLOW 1853-1911 and Hon Florence Coulston GARDNER 1853-1934 d of 3rd Baron GARDNER 1810-83 (since when the baronies remain dormant) and (the actress) Julia Sarah Hayfield FORTESCUE c1821-1899. She m 1966 as his 2nd w Maj Nicholas Spencer Compton 1918-2004 s of Maj Francis Spencer COLLIN 1885-1920 (4xgt gs of Ellen Julia Maud DRUMMOND 1858-1931 scion of the PERTH earls etc) and Bertha Mary HORNUNG 1885-1974 scion of that gentry family of Ivorys, and had a son and a dau (who is the 2nd w of a s of 3rd Baron DARESBURY and has issue).
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Observer
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An old-school Conservative and a grand-daughter of Lord Halifax, ‘Lady C’ hosted one of Boris Johnson’s first appearances as a candidate
Lady Clarissa Collin, who has died aged 82, was the heiress of a grand union of Yorkshire landowning families and a pillar of traditional county life.
The only child of the last Earl of Feversham, Clarissa Collin, née Duncombe, might have been destined for the life of aristocratic pleasure-seeking familiar to her parents and their circle – but instead found contentment, as she put it, “in everything to do with the countryside”, and a wide-ranging commitment to civic duty.
Her father died in 1963, bequeathing to her the Nawton Tower estate in the Ryedale district of North Yorkshire, including thousands of wild acres in the moorland dales.
But she inherited neither his titles – the earldom became extinct, an older barony passing to a distant cousin – nor the Duncombe Park estate at Helmsley that was entailed with them. Death duties claimed another slice of her inheritance, including the mansion of Nawton Tower itself.
Nevertheless she took with gusto to the tasks and routines of estate management, overseeing farming, shooting, a sawmill enterprise and, for some years, a small garden centre as an offshoot of her own lovely garden.
Meanwhile, she was a long-serving magistrate on the Scarborough bench, a vigorous chairman of the Cathedral Council of York Minster and president or trustee of numerous regional charities, with special concerns for drug rehabilitation and mental health.
Clarissa Duncombe was born on October 11 1938 to the 3rd Earl of Feversham, known to friends as “Sim”, and his wife Lady Anne Wood, only daughter of the 3rd Viscount Halifax (later 1st Earl), who was Chamberlain’s Foreign Secretary and later Churchill’s ambassador to Washington, having served as Viceroy of India in the late 1920s.
The marriage connected two prominent Yorkshire dynasties with great estates some 30 miles apart – Halifax’s at Garrowby, east of York. But it was not a love match.
“Both Sim and Anne had amorous interests elsewhere,” as Anne’s sister-in-law Lady Holderness wrote in her memoirs, and despite expectations that a male heir might be dutifully conceived, Anne was disinclined to endure another pregnancy, not least if it meant forfeiting a hunting season.
In 1966 she married, as his second wife, Major Nico Collin, a former Coldstream officer turned bloodstock agent 20 years her senior who had been a shooting friend of her father’s. A son, Fred, and daughter, Laura, followed, and Nico’s son Andrew by his first marriage joined the family. Their home was Wytherstone House in the estate hamlet of Pockley, where Clarissa’s passion for gardening flourished.
In 2016, she organised in meticulous detail a centenary commemoration for her grandfather, the 2nd Earl of Feversham – who had raised a battalion of Yeoman Rifles, including men from his own estate, and met his death leading them in action at the Somme in September 1916.
Nico Collin died in 2004. After their son Fred re-acquired and restored Nawton Tower, which had fallen into dereliction, Clarissa retired happily with her dachshunds to a converted cottage in the stable yard. She is survived by Fred, Laura and Andrew.
Clarissa Collin, born October 11 1938, died July 23 2021
Richard R
E X T R A C T
Lady Clarissa Collin obituary
Fast-driving countrywoman and high sheriff of North Yorkshire who in her twenties suffered terrible injuries in a riding accident
...Clarissa’s upbringing had been privileged but lonely. She was an only child, born in 1938, to the third and last Earl of Feversham, Charles Duncombe, known as “Sim”, and Lady Anne Wood. At the age of nine Sim had inherited Duncombe Park, an estate near Helmsley, in North Yorkshire, so large that it was said he could drive at a steady pace for half an hour from Duncombe Park across the North York Moors National Park to the top end of Westerdale without leaving his own land. His wife was the only daughter of the Viscount Halifax, the former viceroy of India, Chamberlain’s foreign secretary, ambassador to Washington and owner of the nearby Garrowby estate. The union of the two Yorkshire landowning families had taken place in York Minster in 1936 and was described by Chips Channon, the Conservative politician and diarist, as a “hideous, cynical ceremony” with the bride remaining “calm and serious as she walked out of the church”. The marriage was chilly. After Clarissa’s birth there were no more children and both parties took lovers....
...Her coming-out ball in 1956 was hosted by the Duke of Northumberland at Syon House and attended by the Queen and the Queen Mother...
...In 1966 she married Major Nico Collin, a bloodstock agent and a friend of her father. He was 20 years older than her and divorced with a five-year-old son, Andrew. They had two children: Fred, an architect, and Laura, who runs a pub, coincidentally called the Duncombe Arms, in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Nico died in 2004...
Lady Clarissa Collin, heiress and countrywoman, was born on October 11, 1938. She died of a heart attack in her sleep on July 23, 2021, aged 82
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lady-clarissa-collin-obituary-d3pt25pj2