James Lowther, 7th Earl of Lonsdale
James Hugh William Lowther, 7th Earl of Lonsdale (3 November 1922 – 23 May 2006), was a British peer.
Lowther was the elder son of Anthony Lowther, Viscount Lowther, and Muriel Frances Farrar, daughter of Sir George Herbert Farrar, a South African Randlord. Educated at Eton, he then attended Cambridge University in October 1940 to read Mechanical Engineering but abandoned his course after three months and joined the Army in 1941.
The Army sent Lowther to Oxford University, where he completed a degree in Electricity and Magnetism in just six months, and he was commissioned into the Royal Armoured Corps in September 1942. As a Regimental Technical Adjutant with the rank of Captain in the East Riding Yeomanry, he was responsible for the upkeep of fifty-two tanks, two hundred soft vehicles and fifty soldiers, and helped put the first tanks ashore on the Normandy beaches on D-Day. He was later wounded at Caen following the landings, but subsequently returned to the front.
After being demobilised in 1946 he managed a steel erection and sheeting company in Newcastle until his father died somewhat prematurely in 1949. He accepted his grandfather's, Lancelot Lowther, 6th Earl of Lonsdale, invitation to take over the running of the family estates which he subsequently inherited four years later after his grandfather's death in 1953. By this time the Lowther Estates, which comprised some 90,000 acres (360 km2) in Westmorland and Cumberland, were largely run down and burdened by debt, and the Inland Revenue was demanding the payment of death duties amounting to some £2 million. Much of the estate's property in Whitehaven, a town largely built by earlier generations of Lowthers, was disposed of as part of his rescue plan, as indeed was the sale of acres of timber on the estates, felled to raise ready cash, although in this case the Earl replanted half as many trees again. He also established a string of new businesses, Lowther Construction, Lowther Forestry Group, Lowther Park Farms and the Lowther Wildlife Park which helped restore the family's fortunes, but was however unable to find any alternative use for the ancestral pile at Lowther Castle, and he reluctantly decided in 1957 to remove the roof, buttress the walls and leave it as a romantic ruin. He also established the annual Lowther Horse Driving Trials and Country Fair which has attracted thousands of visitors to Cumbria each year, including amongst their number Prince Philip, a regular competitor at the former and the royal couple often stayed with Lonsdale and his family at Lowther in Askham Hall during the trials.
...
Wikipedia