Explorer crushed to death by oak tree on designer’s estate
A RENOWNED interior designer is facing a police investigation after an ancient oak tree on her £8 million estate fell on a car, crushing a man to death.
Former soldier Saxon Bowes-Crick, 46, a triathlete and explorer, was killed instantly when the massive tree hit a Lexus in which he was a passenger. Four others in the car were injured.
The vehicle was struck on a busy A-road next to the grounds of interior designer Tessa Kennedy’s estate on the banks of the Thames near Egham in Surrey.
Miss Kennedy, 80, was a designer to stars including Beatle George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Elizabeth Taylor and King Hussein of Jordan. She told London’s Evening Standard that the tree was inspected recently by her local council, and she believed the authority was responsible for its upkeep. She added: ‘I wasn’t home when it happened. The council had been down to cut the branches off the tree a couple of years ago. It should have been safe.
‘They had dealt with it, but unfortunately it fell down.’
Residents said the tree was ‘phenomenally big’ and had been struck by lightning so often that it had lost its bark.
Mr Bowes-Crick, a tree surgeon from Haywards Heath, West Sussex, was a keen triathlete, skier and returned trip and a His tribute across grief climber family on at from Mongolia. his Facebook. spoke who a death, solo of had bike-rafting their and recently posted shock
come It said: to ‘All an great end, journeys even for must the indomitable Saxon. You’ve travelled far and touched so many lives along the way. Your adventures will never be forgotten.’
Friend Mark Jaehnchen added: ‘When I tell people about the travellers I look up to, the ones who really ... explore, I tell them about this wonderful human I met cycling the desert with a pack-raft and his unbreakable spirit.’ Miss Kennedy was an 18-yearold heiress to a Yugoslavian shipping fortune when she eloped to Cuba with society portrait painter Dominick Elwes in the 1950s. Frank Sinatra sang at their secret wedding but the couple were later forced to flee Cuba on a raft to Miami to escape Fidel Castro’s revolution. including They actor had Cary three Elwes, children, but later separated. Miss Kennedy married again and had another two children with Hollywood producer Elliott Kastner, after the pair were introduced by Warren Beatty. Actress Joan Collins is godmother to the couple’s daughter Milica. Miss Kennedy studied at the École des Beaux-Arts school in Paris, and began working as a designer in London in the 1960s. The award-winning designer, who launched her own firm in 1986, has also worked on designs for The Ritz and Claridge’s in London. She retired to Runnymede, near Egham, in 2014 after auctioning off the contents of her former home in Knightsbridge, including gifts from Rudolf Nureyev, Marlon Brando and Richard Burton. Police investigating Mr BowesCrick’s death have appealed for witnesses and dash-cam footage of the incident on the A308 at 4pm on Sunday, February 17. Surrey County Council said: ‘This was a tragic incident. The tree was on private land and the police are leading the investigation.’
‘He touched so many lives’