Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath

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Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath with his second wife Virginia and daughter Sylvia. Photograph from 1973

Henry Frederick Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath (born January 26, 1905 in Longleat , † June 30, 1992 in Crockerton , Wiltshire ) was a British nobleman, politician and businessman.

Origin, youth and first marriage

Henry Frederick Thynne was the second son and youngest of five children of Thomas Thynne, 5th Marquess of Bath and Violet Mordaunt, daughter of Sir Charles Mordaunt, 10th Baronet and Harriet Moncreiffe. He grew up primarily in the splendid atmosphere of Longleat House , where his father employed 20 house servants even after the First World War . After the death of his older brother, John Alexander , who had died on the Western Front in 1916 , Henry became the heir to the vast property and was given the courtesy title of Viscount Weymouth . He attended Harrow School and then studied agriculture at Christ Church College , Oxford . In Oxford he made friends with Brian Howard , through whom he met Daphne Vivian , the only daughter of George Vivian, 4th Baron Vivian and his first wife Barbara Fanning. In London he belonged to the group of Bright Young Things , who led a bohemian life in the 1920s , and against his father's wishes he married Daphne Vivian as Frederick Thynne in secret and without much ceremony on October 8, 1926 in London. He then traveled to America with his brother-in-law Lord Nunburnholme, where he worked on a ranch in Texas and traveled on to Central and South America. In May 1927 he returned to Great Britain and announced his marriage. On October 27, 1927, the church wedding took place in St Martin-in-the-Fields in London.

Country life and World War II

In 1928 he took over the management of his father's property. In order to modernize the administration, he made redundant staff redundant and intensified the forestry. To this end, he recognized the tourist potential of the Cheddar Gorge , where he had a restaurant and a museum built by the landscape architects Geoffrey Jellicoe and Russell Page . Instead of living in Longleat, where his old father still lived, he lived with his wife in a more modest house on the estate, where he u. a. Cecil Beaton and Robert Byron received. At his father's insistence, he ran successfully for Frome in the 1931 general election as the Tories candidate and remained a member of the House of Commons until 1935 , after which he returned to rural life and the management of estates.

The Second World War interrupted his country life. He joined the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and was wounded in the Battle of El Alamein . Back in Great Britain, he became a liaison officer to the 19th US Corps , based at Longleat. He took part with this in the invasion of Normandy and was awarded the Bronze and Silver Star for this, before he retired from the army with the rank of major.

Acquisition of Longleat

When his father died on June 9, 1946 after World War II, Thynne, now known as the Marquess of Bath Lord Bath, had to pay exorbitant inheritance taxes of £ 700,000. For this he had to sell almost 22 km² of the over 64 km² property. In addition to the oppressive inheritance taxes, he took over the vast mansion of Longleat, which alone cost around £ 30,000 a year to maintain. After the war, an outsourced girls' school was housed in the manor house. Bath initially thought of converting it into a luxury hotel, but then, inspired by his success in Cheddar Gorge, he decided to open it for a fee. Aside from Warwick Castle , there was no example of running a stately home as a tourist attraction, and in the post-war period of deprivation the company was also an economic risk. Bath paved roads so that the expected streams of visitors could arrive, opened a café on the ground floor and publicized its attraction, which it opened for the first time on April 1, 1949. To everyone's astonishment, 135,000 visitors came in the first year, and Longleat from then on served as an example of a new tourism division. Bath was soon using the entire property commercially, hiring Russell Page again, this time to redesign the Longleat Gardens for visitors. In addition, he expanded forestry in his lands.

As a result of the war and the resulting separation, Bath and his wife were married to tensions, which ultimately led to their divorce in May 1953. Both Thynne and his ex-wife Daphne remarried almost immediately afterwards. While Daphne married the writer Xan Fielding , Bath married Virginia Tennant, former wife of David Tennant and daughter of Alan Leonard Romaine Parsons and Viola Tree, on July 15, 1953. In her 1954 memoir, his ex-wife published the secret of their secret civil wedding, which had not yet been saved. Bath had to go to the High Court to have his first marriage also annulled in 1955.

Lions in Longleat Park

When more stately homes were opened for viewing, Bath continued to invest in Longleat to make its property competitive. From the beginning of 1953 he rented pedal boats on the lake in the park, a garden shop followed in 1960, and he soon employed a public relations specialist to keep the high visitor numbers. Bath was determined to run Longleat without government grants, which it considered shameful. In 1964, circus artist Jimmy Chipperfield suggested that he keep lions in Longleat Park, and in April 1966, Bath opened Europe's first safari park, which was another sensation. The press thought the idea of ​​letting the lions roam free while visitors drove through the park in their cars was life-threatening and dubbed Bath the Mad Marquess . Success once again proved Bath to be right. The number of visitors to the mansion climbed, also attracted by Churchill - Memorabilensammlung , to 300,000, while the Safari Park in the first year 100,000 people visited. Bath continued to expand the attractions over the next few years. He set up wax figures in the kitchen and offered Longleat as a location for television.

Withdrawal in private life

Reluctantly, Bath eventually handed over most of the property to his eldest son Alexander, Viscount Weymouth, who had been a co-owner since 1958, in order to keep inheritance taxes as low as possible. As an old man, Bath withdrew from the public spotlight and devoted himself to his private collections, which included memorabilia from Churchill, Hitler , Edward VIII , Margaret Thatcher and children's books. When he bought two watercolors painted by Hitler at an auction in 1960, he received a lot of criticism, which increased when he admitted that he admired Hitler and that he owned the largest collection of Hitler's paintings in the world. His son Alexander called him a fascist after his death. He paid off his last debts with income from his books in 1979, and built a fortune through land sales by his son. At his death his possessions were worth over £ 44 million.

His ashes were buried in the Longbridge Deverill family crypt .

progeny

Bath had five children with his first wife, Daphne Vivian:

From his second marriage to Virginia Tennant, he had a daughter:

  • Lady Silvy Cerne Thynne (* 1958) ⚭ Iain McQuiston

His eldest surviving son, Alexander Thynne, inherited his title.

Works

  • Henry Thynne; Marquess of Bath; Jimmy Chipperfield; Nicholas Flower: The lions of Longleat . Cassell, London 1969.

Web links

Commons : Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of Bath  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Sager: Southern England (DuMont art travel guide). DuMont, Cologne 1996. ISBN 3-7701-3498-2 , p. 249
predecessor Office successor
Thomas Thynne Marquess of Bath
1946-1992 		Alexander Thynn
personal data
SURNAME Thynne, Henry, 6th Marquess of Bath
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thynne, Henry Frederick (full name); Thynne, Henry, Viscount Weymouth; Bath, Henry Thynne, 6th Marquess of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British nobleman, politician and businessman
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Longleat
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1992
Place of death Crockerton , Wiltshire