Whirlwind life of 3rd Earl – traveller, playwright and designer
EDWARD William Bootle-Wilbraham was the only son of the 2nd Earl and Countess of Lathom – born on May 16 1895 where his father, Lord Skelmersdale was serving in the Queens Horse Guard.
When he was not quite four years old, he totally unexpectedly became the 3rd Lord Skelmersdale after the death of his paternal grandfather, Edward, Lord Lathom. Ned’s father became the 2nd Lord Lathom and life for the young Bootle-Wilbraham children completely changed.
Ned’s father moved back to Lancashire to take his seat as the Earl of Lathom, the move took Ned’s mother Wilma, Countess of Lathom away from her beloved London life of music and theatre. As Lord Skelmersdale he went to Eton, to a Mr. C.M. Well’s house in 1907.
In 1910 he succeeded his father in the earldom, and in 1913 he left Eton and went up to Christ Church, Oxford. World War I broke out in 1914 and the 3rd Earl joined the Lancashire Hussars. He did see brief service in France and served in India for a few months.
After the war ended Ned did not return to Lathom House, which had been the billet for Army Remount Service officers. Instead he travelled with his sister Lady Barbara to the USA and The US Territory of Hawaii in 1919 with the plan to travel on to Australia.
Over the next few years and into the late 1920s Lord Lathom, often accompanied by his sister Barbara whose husband had been killed in the war during 1915, travelled first class on ocean going liners across the Atlantic and the Pacific. He visited Honolulu on a few occasions, travelling from New York to San Francisco to board a ship to travel onwards to Hawaii.
On one trip the Earl found himself stepping off a train in Chicago on his way to New York from Colorado Springs. Chicago being the halfway point he had booked a hotel room for his overnight rest stop and with a real English peer in town journalists were besieging the hotel asking for an interview.
Lord Lathom eventually agreed to meet the press in his room and they all crowded in and listened to the Earl speak of his adventures in Colorado. After several questions from the press and some gracious and polite answers from the Earl, one wide-eyed young reporter smilingly asked the Earl, ‘Now would you tell us who you are?’ On his return to
England the Earl found this story amusing and would recount it to the British press.
As a playwright Lord Lathom was considered competent, melancholy, very lively and often risqué. He had formed the Venture Club to avoid having to have a licence to put the plays on. Whereas the theatre would attract different classes of people, the Venture Club was created for those besotted with music and drama, the men dressed in top hat and tails to watch the actors on the stage.
The staging was always to the highest standard, Lord Lathom had his own company of scenery designers and decorators. The opening of one of his plays was always bigger news than might be expected simply because Lord Lathom himself was ‘news’, he held a strong presence in Society.
The reports of the day always appear to record how very well loved and respected the young Earl was by his staff, tenants and the residents of Lathom. When he turned 21 in 1916 he was actually serving in France and he was only ever wished the best for the future by those who had known him at home.
His widowed mother, Wilma, remarried in 1912 to Sir Henry Merrick Lawson who went on to serve as General Officer in Chief of the Northern Commands during the First World War and also encouraged the formation of the Women’s Auxiliary Corps.
The couple lived at Grove Place, Lymington, Hants, later the home of author Dennis Wheatley. It was Grove Place where Ned returned to from Eton and Oxford rather than Lathom until he was older and became obsessed with renovating Blythe Hall, the Dower House to Lathom House and once home to his GreatGrandparents,
The Hon Richard and Jessy Bootle-Wilbraham.
During the 1920s, when he wasn’t on yet another ocean going liner travelling to some exotic place, he was overseeing the luxurious and wildly extravagant renovations at Blythe, including the Romanesque indoor swimming pool. He brought his society and theatre friends to Blythe to indulge in extravagance and gaiety as though they hadn’t a care in the world. The bright young things of the theatre... Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, Gladys Cooper... came to Blythe and were invited to perform in reviews in the abandoned Remount Depot wooden hut which had been the theatre for the soldiers on the Depot at the
Park. Ned moved the Hut onto another part of his estate and it became the hub for the local community during the 20s and 30s.
Throughout his twenties Ned suffered ill health with a constitution not suitable to damp climate and this saw him seek out the sun and fresh air. He visited Switzerland and continued to travel to the USA and Hawaii in particular.
Interior design became his interest, stemming from the renovations he oversaw at Blythe and the huge input he had in the stage design for his plays. This led to him meeting and eventually marrying Xenia Merison, who lived and worked in Kensington.
Xenia, Countess of Lathom had been born in Singapore in 1893, Xenia came to London in 1924, her ancestry was French, Italian and English and she had a huge love of Art. She published books on Art history and became a part of Lord Lathom’s world shortly after.
The 3rd Earl lost his fight against ill health and died of Tuberculosis in 1935 aged 35. Xenia died a short time later.
The Earl was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, his wife was abroad and ill herself and missed his funeral. His sisters Barbara and Rosemary attended, his sister Helen had died a few years earlier. His paternal Aunt Lady Bertha Dawkins and cousin Capt Arthur George Bootle-Wilbraham also attended, Arthur was to become the next Lord Skelmersdale and the Earl of Lathom title died with the 3rd Earl.