Lady Alexandra Margaret Anne Cavendish-Bentinck (6 September 1916 – 29 December 2008) was a member of the
British nobility
The British nobility is made up of the peerage and the (landed) gentry. The nobility of its four constituent home nations has played a major role in shaping the history of the country, although now they retain only the rights to stand for election ...
and one of the richest landowners in the country. She was a notable charity worker, art collector, and horsewoman.
Family
Lady Anne
Cavendish-Bentinck
Cavendish-Bentinck is a surname associated with the Dukes of Portland and their descendants. Bentinck is a Dutch surname brought to England by William Bentinck, an advisor to William III of England. Cavendish was added to the family name by ...
was born in Kensington, the daughter of
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
politician
William Cavendish-Bentinck, 7th Duke of Portland
William Arthur Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 7th Duke of Portland, (16 March 1893 – 21 March 1977), styled Marquess of Titchfield until 1943, was a British peer and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party politician.
Biography
Portland was the ...
(1893–1977). Her mother was
Ivy Gordon-Lennox, daughter of
Lord Algernon Charles Gordon-Lennox, son of
Charles Gordon-Lennox, 6th Duke of Richmond
Charles Henry Gordon-Lennox, 6th Duke of Richmond, 6th Duke of Lennox, and 1st Duke of Gordon, (27 February 181827 September 1903), styled Lord Settrington until 1819 and then Earl of March until 1860, was a British Conservative politician.
Ba ...
. Lord Algernon was a close friend of
Queen Alexandra
Alexandra of Denmark (Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia; 1 December 1844 – 20 November 1925) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, from 22 January 1901 to 6 May 1910 as the wife of King ...
, who was Lady Anne's godmother.
Cavendish-Bentinck came from an aristocratic family rooted in the height of the Anglo-Dutch ascendancy, the
Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution; gd, Rèabhlaid Ghlòrmhor; cy, Chwyldro Gogoneddus , also known as the ''Glorieuze Overtocht'' or ''Glorious Crossing'' in the Netherlands, is the sequence of events leading to the deposition of King James II and ...
.
Hans Willem Bentinck came to Britain from Holland with
William of Orange in 1670 and was created
Earl of Portland
Earl of Portland is a title that has been created twice in the Peerage of England, firstly in 1633 and secondly in 1689. What proved to be a long co-held title, Duke of Portland, was created in 1716 and became extinct in 1990 upon the death of t ...
in 1689.
His son,
Henry, 2nd Earl, was created Duke of Portland in 1716.
The family accumulated property nationwide, including land in
Marylebone
Marylebone (usually , also , ) is a district in the West End of London, in the City of Westminster. Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, forms its southern boundary.
An Civil parish#Ancient parishes, ancient parish and latterly a ...
, later redeveloped as part of
Westminster
Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster.
The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...
, leading to Bentinck Street, Cavendish Square, Great Portland Street,
Portland Place
Portland Place is a street in the Marylebone district of central London. Named after the Third Duke of Portland, the unusually wide street is home to BBC Broadcasting House, the Chinese and Polish embassies, the Royal Institute of British A ...
,
Harley Street
Harley Street is a street in Marylebone, Central London, which has, since the 19th century housed a large number of private specialists in medicine and surgery. It was named after Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer.< ...
, named after a line of the Earls of Oxford into which a Bentinck married, and Welbeck Street, named after their seat,
Welbeck Abbey
Welbeck Abbey in the Dukeries in North Nottinghamshire was the site of a monastery belonging to the Premonstratensian order in England and after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a country house residence of the Dukes of Portland. It is one ...
in Nottinghamshire.
Anne was related to Queen
Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...
and her surname was shared with the latter's maternal grandmother
Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne
Cecilia Nina Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne (' Cavendish-Bentinck; 11 September 1862 – 23 June 1938) was the mother of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, maternal grandmother and godmother of Queen Elizabeth II, and great-g ...
; they shared a great-great grandfather,
Lord Charles Bentinck
Lord William Charles Augustus Cavendish-Bentinck (20 May 178028 April 1826), known as Lord Charles Bentinck, was a British soldier and politician and a great-great-grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II.
Background
Bentinck was the third son of Brit ...
.
Anne's paternal grandfather,
William Cavendish-Bentinck, 6th Duke of Portland
William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck, 6th Duke of Portland, (28 December 1857 – 26 April 1943), known as William Cavendish-Bentinck until 1879, was a British landowner, courtier, and Conservative politician. He notably ser ...
(1857–1943), broke the
entail
In English common law, fee tail or entail is a form of trust established by deed or settlement which restricts the sale or inheritance of an estate in real property and prevents the property from being sold, devised by will, or otherwise alien ...
of the family estates and set up a trust ensuring that they and the family seat of
Welbeck Abbey
Welbeck Abbey in the Dukeries in North Nottinghamshire was the site of a monastery belonging to the Premonstratensian order in England and after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a country house residence of the Dukes of Portland. It is one ...
went to his eldest granddaughter on the death of her father, thus disinheriting later Bentinck heirs.
Anne had one sibling, a younger sister, Lady Victoria Margaret Parente (9 October 1918 –12 April 1950), who married Gaetano Parente, Prince of Castel Viscardo. As Anne had no brothers and was made her grandfather’s heiress, she became very rich.
As the succession to the Dukedom of Portland was strictly in the male line, Anne's father was succeeded in his titles by his third cousin
Ferdinand Cavendish-Bentinck. The dukedom and most of the other peerages became extinct in 1990 when the
9th Duke died without a male heir. However, the earldom of Portland was inherited by a male-line descendant of the first Duke's younger brother. The 12th and (as of 2023) present Earl of Portland is the actor
Tim Bentinck
Timothy Charles Robert Noel Bentinck, 12th Earl of Portland, Count Bentinck und Waldeck Limpurg, (born 1 June 1953), commonly known as Tim Bentinck, is an English actor and writer, known for his long-running role as David Archer in the BBC ...
, who plays David Archer in the
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
soap opera ''
The Archers
''The Archers'' is a BBC radio drama on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural settin ...
''.
Lady Anne never married and had no children. Her obituary in the ''
Daily Telegraph
Daily or The Daily may refer to:
Journalism
* Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks
* ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times''
* ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...
'' repeats the story that as a débutante, she refused to marry a Belgian nobleman, destined to be
Prince Charles of the Belgians. When he came to ask for her hand in marriage she reportedly refused to get out of bed. She hoped instead to marry
John Osborne, 11th Duke of Leeds
John Francis Godolphin Osborne, 11th Duke of Leeds (12 March 1901 – 26 July 1963) was a British peer.
He was the son of George Godolphin Osborne, 10th Duke of Leeds and Lady Katherine Frances Lambton. He succeeded to the title of 11th Duke of ...
, but her family prevented this.
Lady Anne's sole heir was her nephew, William Parente, who is married with two children. When he served as
High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire
This is a list of the High Sheriffs of the English county of Nottinghamshire.
The High Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. Formerly the High Sheriff was the principal law enforcement officer in the county but over the centuri ...
for 2003–2004, ''
The London Gazette
''The London Gazette'' is one of the official journals of record or government gazettes of the Government of the United Kingdom, and the most important among such official journals in the United Kingdom, in which certain statutory notices are ...
'' gave his address as Welbeck Abbey.
Interests
She was involved with many charities throughout her life. These included "causes for the blind", and the
Girl Guides
Girl Guides (known as Girl Scouts in the United States and some other countries) is a worldwide movement, originally and largely still designed for girls and women only. The movement began in 1909 when girls requested to join the then-grassroot ...
, whom she allowed to have a permanent camp at Welbeck, much to the annoyance of the caretakers.
Lady Anne was the president of Nottinghamshire
St. John Ambulance Brigade
St John Ambulance is the name of a number of affiliated organisations in different countries which teach and provide first aid and emergency medical services, and are primarily staffed by Volunteering, volunteers. The associations are overseen b ...
and the president of
Portland College
Portland College is an education establishment near Ravenshead, Nottinghamshire. It is situated in of Sherwood Forest approximately south of the town of Mansfield. Portland College has around 270 students aged between 16 and 60. It was es ...
.
She enjoyed art; she possessed a treasure trove of art including works by
Stubbs and
van Dyke Van Dyke, VanDyke or Vandyke is an Americanized or anglicized form of the Dutch language, Dutch-language toponymic surname ''Van Dijk'', ''Van Dijke'', ''Van Dijck'', or ''Van Dyck (surname), Van Dyck''. Meaning living near the dike.
Van Dyke, Van ...
. She also had a sizable silver collection that she stored in her strongroom. In 1977 she helped establish the
Harley Foundation, an art educational charity named after her ancestor, the collector
Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford
Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer (2 June 1689 – 16 June 1741), styled Lord Harley between 1711 and 1724, was a British politician, bibliophile, collector and patron of the arts.
Background
Harley was the only son of Rober ...
.
She was a horsewoman, riding until she was 90 years old. For about 20 years the Welbeck Estate had its own hunt, the Rufford Harriers, at which she hunted sidesaddle.
While she never placed a bet, her horses were successful in their races, leading her to become a leading racehorse owner in Northern England.
She was described by an employee as "famously forthright, funny and practical, a devastatingly gifted mimic, and would have no truck with pomposity or preciousness." She drove her small jeep on the private roads of her estate until a few days before her death.
Property
Lady Anne's immediate family still ranked quite high, 511th nationally by wealth, per the
''Sunday Times Rich List'' in 2008.
['']The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'' (London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
), 27 April 2008, p. 61: "Bentinck, 91, who lives on a Nottinghamshire estate, has land and property worth £58m. The daughter of the 7th Duke of Portland also owned impressive fine art treasures." Much of this wealth was in land and buildings. At the time of her death, she was said to own (just over 3%) of
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...
and in Scotland.
Ancestry
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cavendish-Bentinck, Anne
1916 births
2008 deaths
British people of English descent
British people of Dutch descent
English people of Scottish descent
People from Welbeck
People from Bassetlaw District
People from Nottinghamshire
20th-century women landowners
20th-century British landowners
20th-century Scottish landowners
20th-century English landowners
Daughters of British dukes
Anne
Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie.
Anne is sometimes used as a male name in the ...
20th-century Scottish businesspeople