WAKEFIELD, Gerald Hugo Cropper 1938-2021

[Richard R]

From the Telegraph and Times of 19 June 2021: WAKEFIELD G.H.C. (Hady), on 16th June 2021. Beloved husband to Victoria and loving father to Edward (Teddy). Private family funeral with memorial service at a later date.

He was s of Sir Edward Birkbeck WAKEFIELD 1st Bt 1903-69 and Constance Lalage PERRONET THOMPSON 1906-2001. He m 1971 Victoria Rose b 1942 d of Maj Cecil Henry FEILDEN 1907-83 (2xgt gs of Henry FEILDEN 1765-1815 bro of Sir William FEILDEN 1st Bt 1771-1867, gs of 2nd Viscount HAMPDEN 1841-1906 and scion of the DEVONSHIRE dukes, HAREWOOD earls etc etc) and Olivia Constance Leonora BARING 1908-75 (gd of 4th Baron ASHBURTON 1835-89), and had a son Edward (Teddy) Cecil b 1973 as above who is married with two daus.

The late Hady Wakefield's niece, Mary b 1975, is m to Dominic CUMMINGS, sometime senior adviser to the British PM Boris JOHNSON, by whom she has a son.

[rcb1]

Very, very sad.  Hady was an exceptionally kind, clever, generous and modest man.  Someone who always made me feel happier for spending time in his company.,  But he was blighted by Parkinson's disease in recent years and I fear that life had become a terrible struggle.

[colinp]

Obit in Daily TELEGRAPH 26 July 2021 -  Hady Wakefield, insurance broker who had a beautiful Hampshire garden and was noted in clubland for his knowledge of wine – obituary (telegraph.co.uk)

EXTRACTS

Hady Wakefield, who has died aged 82, was a prominent figure in the Lloyd’s insurance market during difficult times in the 1980s. Descended from a notable family of bankers and public servants, he was also the steward of a beautiful Hampshire estate.

The Wakefields were originally Quaker bankers from Kendal, whose firm Wakefield Crewdson & Co was sold in 1893 to the Bank of Liverpool, eventually to become part of Barclays. Gerald Hugo Cropper Wakefield, known from infancy as Hady, was born in India on September 15 1938 – at the Maharajah of Nabha’s residence, Stirling Castle, in the Himalayan foothills of Simla.

He was the second son of Edward Birkbeck Wakefield, a rising star of the Indian Civil Service who served as chief minister in several Indian states; Hady’s mother Lalage was a celebrated horsewoman, also born in Simla but brought up in Ireland; before her marriage she had been a society belle in Delhi, where her father Sir John Perronet Thompson was chief commissioner.

The Wakefield parents, who had survived being buried alive in the 1935 Quetta earthquake in which their elder daughter was killed, returned from India in 1947. Edward went on to become Conservative MP for West Derbyshire, treasurer of HM Household, a baronet in 1962, and finally High Commissioner to Malta.

Hady, meanwhile, had been sent home aged six to Gordonstoun’s prep school, where he endured “the worst years of my life” but enjoyed holidays on the Lake District estate of his uncle, the MP and former England rugby captain W W Wakefield, later Lord Wakefield of Kendal.

After leaving the City, Wakefield focused with enthusiasm for the rest of his life on farming at Bramdean in Hampshire and supporting his wife’s gardening projects. Victoria, née Feilden, whom he married in 1971, was descended on her mother’s side from the Baring banking dynasty and had inherited the Bramdean estate – whose house dates from the 1740s and whose landscape features double mirror-image herbaceous borders rising through walled kitchen gardens and orchards to a distant Apple House as a focal point.

Hady Wakefield is survived by his wife and their son Edward. The Wakefield baronetcy is held by Hady’s elder brother Sir Humphry, of Chillingham Castle, Northumberland.

Hady Wakefield, born September 15 1938, died June 16 2021

[Richard R]

Obit in the Times of 13 Aug 2021:
E X T R A C T
Hady Wakefield obituary
Gentlemanly insurance broker and farmer who grew up in an Indian palace and almost lost his shirt as a ‘name’ at Lloyd’s
...Gerald Hugo Cropper Wakefield, known by his childhood name Hady, was born in Simla, India, in 1938, at the Maharajah of Nabha’s residence, Stirling Castle. He was the youngest of four children of Sir Edward Wakefield, a civil servant and chief minister in several Indian states, and Lalage, a renowned Irish-raised horsewoman and daughter of Sir John Perronet Thompson, also a colonial administrator.
The doctor in charge at Wakefield’s birth was a Dr O’Hagan, which as a child he pronounced Hady. He had an elder brother, Humphry (now Sir), and two sisters, Xanthe and Imogen
In 1935 their parents survived being buried in the Quetta earthquake, which killed Imogen. When the family returned to England in 1947 Sir Edward became Conservative MP for West Derbyshire and later high commissioner to Malta.
“We lived in a smallish palace near the Maharajah’s domed splendour,” Humphry said, “making Hady and me very scornful of Buckingham Palace.” They rode in a horse-drawn carriage every afternoon with a driver who, instead of whipping the horses, stoned them with a catapult....
...In 1963 Humphry introduced his brother to his secretary, Victoria Feilden, part of the Baring banking family, who needed an extra man for a party at her parents’ country house, Bramdean, near Winchester. They married in 1971 and had one child, Edward, now an entrepreneur and corporate financier....
...Hady’s niece, Mary, is a writer and editor on The Spectator magazine and is married to Dominic Cummings of Barnard Castle fame....
Hady Wakefield, insurance broker and farmer, was born on September 15, 1938. He died from complications relating to Parkinson’s disease on June 16, 2021 aged 82
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hady-wakefield-obituary-9vm8585t2