Back to search results
Name: PORTSMOUTH, Gerard Vernon Wallop, Earl
Nee: 9th Earl of Portsmouth
Birth Date: 16 May 1898 Chicago, USA
Death Date: 28 Sep 1984 Newbury, Berks.
First Date: 1952
Profession: Farmer and politician
Area: Mt. Elgon, 1948 Over Wallop Farm Kitale
Married: 1. 1920 Mary Lawrence Post (div. 1936) d. 1964 2. In Westminster 1936 Bridget Cory Crohan b. 5 Nov 1911, d. 15 Dec 1979 London
Children: Oliver Kintzing (Viscount Lymington) (1923); Nicholas Valoynes Bermingham (1946); Anne Camilla Eveline (Nevill) (1925); Phillipa Dorothy Bluett (Viscountess Chelsea) (1937); Jane Alionora Borlase (1939)
Author: A Knot of Roots (autobiog)
Book Reference: Obituary, Hut, Rhodesia, Debrett, Who's Who, Burke
War Service: 2nd Lt. Life Guards and Gds MG Regt 1916-19
School: Winchester & Balliol College, Oxford
General Information:
Obituary - The Earl of Portsmouth, who has died, aged 86, was, as Viscount Lymington, Conservative MP for Basingstoke from 1929 to 1934. He left his ancestral home at Farleigh Wallop, Hants, in 1952 to settle in Kenya, where his pioneer spirit found better scope. He explained in Kenya later: "I had turned Farleigh from a bankrupt into a going concern, but I could not make more than £3000 a year after payment of taxes. So I came here to save the estate. I hope the Portsmouth continuity will be kept going in Kenya." He farmed 12,000 acres on the slopes of Mt. Elgon in Western Kenya. "By living on what I make here," he said, "I am left with more money for Farleigh."
Gerard Vernon Wallop, the 9th Earl, succeeded his father in 1943. Educated at Winchester and Balliol, Oxford, he served in the 1914-18 war with the 2nd Lifeguards and the Guards' Machine Gun Regt. A successful farmer, he published, in 1932 a comprehensive survey of the agricultural problem in his book "Horn, Hoof and Corn." In "Famine in England," 1938, he asserted that a starving nation was no fantastic vision but an ever present possibility. His autobiography, "A Knot of Roots," was published in 1965.
In England the hereditary Bailiff of Burley, in the New Forest, Lord Portsmouth was a member of the Legislative Council in Kenya from 1957 to 1960. He there owned coffee and tea plantations and raised beef and dairy cattle. He was president of the European Elections Union in Kenya 1953-55. Lord Portsmouth's first wife, Mary Lawrence Post, of Long Island, United States, whom he married in 1920, divorced him in 1936. They had a son and daughter. He married in 1936, Bridget Cory Crohan and had a son and two daughters.
Rhodesia - farms at Over Wallop, near Kitale, Kenya, is a nominated member of the Legislative Council of Kenya. In the first world war he served in France in the 2nd Life Guards and the Guards Machine Gun Regiment, and later, as Viscount Lymington, he was for 5 years a member of the House of Commons. Throughout the last war he was vice-chairman of the Hampshire War Agricultural Executive Committee. He has written a number of books on farming.
Debrett - Farmer, elected Vice-Pres. European Electors Union, Kenya 1952 & Pres. 1953. WW1 1916-19 as Lieut. 2nd Life Guards and Guards Machine Gun Regt.; sat as MP for Basingstoke Div. Of Hampshire © May 1929 to Feb 1934
Back to search results
