Lady Mary Holborow
Lord Lieutenant for Cornwall who brought vigour to the role
LADY MARY HOLBOROW, who has died aged 80, was Lord Lieutenant for Cornwall from 1994 to 2011; although not native to Cornwall she proved herself an exceptional champion for the county.
She was credited by one of her deputies with having “almost single-handedly revived … the Lieutenancy in Cornwall, which without her might easily have slipped into irrelevance.”
Among her responsibilities, in 2002 she was charged with launching the Queen’s Golden Jubilee tour of the UK from Cornwall, which began in Falmouth with a visit to the harbour to launch a new lifeboat. Some 1,500 people lined the streets of the town to greet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. On the previous day, however, Mary Holborow had found herself balancing on a pontoon that was bobbing up and down beneath her feet, buffeted by wind and rain. Fortunately the weather turned the next day and the visit was deemed a great success.
Mary Christina Stopford was born at Brunton, Northumberland, on September 19 1936, the eldest daughter of the 8th Earl of Courtown and his wife Christina, the daughter of an admiral. Mary’s parents divorced when she was young and she and her sister Elizabeth grew up with their mother in Surrey, spending summers in Ireland at their father’s home in Co Wexford. When her mother remarried Mary grew close to her stepfather Christopher Vian.
After Tudor Hall school and a spell in Paris she worked for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association for four years. At the age of 23 she married Geoffrey Holborow, a land agent, and moved to Cornwall.
She was quickly swept up by St John’s Ambulance, becoming County Superintendent and then Commissioner for Cornwall. Her sister Elizabeth Godsal became Commissioner for Berkshire and for a time they were the only female commissioners in Britain.
Before being appointed Lord Lieutenant, Mary Holborow served for many years as a Justice of the Peace; a non-executive director of South West Water, at the time of the Camelford water poisoning incident; and a director of the TSB and regional chairman of the Rural Development Commission. Over the course of her career she was associated with at least 45 different Cornish organisations.
She embraced all things Cornish and was a keen supporter of Cornish rugby, travelling with the supporters, “Trelawny’s Army”, on several occasions to Twickenham. She established and chaired the Cornwall Community Foundation and set up the Lord Lieutenant’s Fund for Youth to help realise the ambitions of Cornwall’s young.
She was also an early champion of the Eden Project. In the late nineties there was a view that Cornwall could either have Falmouth University or Eden, but she gave this short shrift, convinced that Cornwall needed both.
She was made a Cornish Bard and received the Trelawny Plate, which recognises the person considered to be the “living embodiment of the spirit of Cornwall”.
She was appointed DCVO in 2010.
At the time of her retirement the Prince of Wales wrote: “We are desperately sad that the time has come for Lady Mary to step down as Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall. The energy and enthusiasm which she puts into everything she tackles has been enormously impressive … through the Lord Lieutenant’s Fund for Youth Lady Mary has made a real and touching impact on the lives of far too many young people to count. It will be hard to find a worthier legacy for a Lord Lieutenant.”
Lady Mary Holborow’s husband Geoffrey died in 2015 and she is survived by their son and daughter.
Lady Mary Holborow, born September 19 1936, died June 9 2017