The Duke of Wellington obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/31/the-duke-of-wellington

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Valerian Wellesley, the 8th Duke of Wellington, who has died aged 99, was a courteous and reticent man who devoted much of his life to Stratfield Saye, the estate in Hampshire of his illustrious ancestor Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, and to the titles and landholdings abroad which had been conferred on the 1st Duke after he famously routed Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in 1815.

The 8th Duke combined his stately living with devotion to the British Army and the preservation of the countryside. He could be as dogged as his famous forebear about what he thought to be questions of family honour and practical politics. Preserving Stratfield Saye, which the 1st Duke had bought from the £600,000 conferred on him by the British government for his war services, was first on the list of his priorities.

The house was modest for an international hero. The 1st Duke had set out with the idea of demolishing the existing house and creating a grand palace but had characteristically decided, after exploring the figures and sensing they would bankrupt him, that he had better settle for the smaller property. He elected, however, to install central heating – Stratfield Saye was the first great house in Britain to enjoy such a practical luxury – and to have a lavatory in every bedroom.

The 7th Duke, Gerald Wellesley, a former surveyor of the King’s Works of Art who succeeded to the title in 1943 after his nephew was killed in action during the second world war, had neglected the house, leaving the 8th Duke with the task of bringing it up to scratch without ruining himself. For a time it was quite a battle. In 1972 he proposed to Hampshire county council that Stratfield Saye and its parkland be opened to the public as a country park retreat, but the scheme was rejected by the environment minister, Peter Walker, chiefly because of inadequate drainage and sewerage systems. The Duke improved the systems, and got approval for a golf course, showground, restaurants, a museum, a riding school, a ski slope, camping and caravanning sites, and facilities for sailing, fishing and water sports. In 1974 he opened the house and country park to the public.

No prisoner of nostalgia, he threw himself into the contemporary battle for the general preservation of the countryside through organisations including the Game Conservancy, the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, the Council for Environmental Conservation, the Atlantic Salmon Trust and the Zoological Society of London. He was also a director of the tractor-making firm Massey Ferguson.

The large number of overseas titles conferred on the 1st Duke and his successors after Waterloo by Britain’s grateful allies included some as arcane as Prince of Waterloo, in the Netherlands (before Belgium came into being); Count of Vimeiro, Marquess of Torres Vedras and Duke of Victoria, in Portugal; and Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo and a Grandee (1st Class) of Spain. The corresponding land holdings and tithe privileges could have been a millstone round the neck of a less flexible or persistent man.

In the 1970s and 80s, the 8th Duke defended his privileges successfully against opposition from Count Yves du Monceau de Bergendal, mayor of Ottignies in Belgium, who started a campaign to end the duke’s right to collect an income of about £20,000 a year from an estate near the battlefield of Waterloo. “Our friends should not impose such an undesirable burden on us,” said the count, in whose parliamentary constituency the estate was situated and who wanted the land used for houses and roads.

Though the 8th Duke kept a low profile in a battle that could have been a re-run of Waterloo, his farming tenants opened fire, forming a pressure group that professed itself shocked by the proposals. In this overheated atmosphere, the 8th Duke kept his head as coolly as the Iron Duke would have done. In effect, he fought a rearguard action until the count lost his parliamentary seat and everyone else grew tired of the dispute.

Perhaps this victory had been foreshadowed on the playing fields of Eton, the school where Valerian Wellesley was educated, before going to New College, Oxford. His parents, Dorothy (nee Ashton) and Gerald, had separated when he was a boy, his mother having left to become a lover of the writer Vita Sackville-West. Valerian joined the army at the start of the second world war, fighting chiefly in the Middle East and in 1941 winning the Military Cross. From 1943, when his father succeeded as 7th Duke of Wellington, he was styled Marquess of Douro. In 1944 he married Diana McConnel.

The army accounted for much of the rest of his life. In 1954 he became the lieutenant colonel commanding the Royal Horse Guards, followed by spells as Silver Stick in Waiting and lieutenant-colonel commanding the Household Cavalry, commander of the 22nd Armoured Brigade, and commander of the RAC 1st (British) Corps. From 1964 to 1967 he was defence attache in Madrid. He succeeded as Duke of Wellington on the death of his father in 1972. From 1974 until 2007, he was colonel-in-chief of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, and then, when the regiment was amalgamated into the Yorkshire Regiment, deputy colonel-in-chief.

The 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo will be marked by a service at St Paul’s cathedral on 18 June 2015 which the duke had hoped to attend. He said: “We need to be reminded of the bravery of the thousands of men from many nations who fought and died in a few hours on 18 June 1815 and why their gallantry and sacrifice ensured peace in Europe for 50 years.”

His wife died in 2010. The duke is survived by their four sons, the eldest of whom, Charles, Marquess of Douro, succeeds as the 9th Duke, and a daughter, Jane, who in 2009 published a family history, Wellington: A Journey Through My Family.

• Arthur Valerian Wellesley, 8th Duke of Wellington, born 2 July 1915; died 31 December 2014