JANEY COMPTON, who has died aged 92, was for many years the chatelaine of Newby Hall, near Ripon in North Yorkshire, and responsible for re-creating many of its fine Robert Adam interiors.
Designed by Christopher Wren, Newby Hall was built in 1696 for Sir Edward Blackett and acquired in 1748 by an ancestor of the Comptons, William Weddell, who later added two wings by Robert Adam. In 1765-66 Weddell made the Grand Tour, returning with magnificent sculptures and tapestries, which remain in the house today along with Chippendale furniture and fine paintings and porcelain.
In 1960 Robin Compton — European chairman of Time Life International from 1979 to 1990 — took over the house from his father, Major Edward Compton. By that time Newby Hall was in a state of some disrepair, having last been redecorated in the 1930s, and Compton was fortunate that his wife Janey both loved the house and showed a real flair for restoration.
While he concentrated on developing the 25 acres of gardens — now famous for their shrub collections and herbaceous borders — Janey Compton set about restoring and redecorating all the public rooms, including the entrance hall, library, tapestry room and public bedrooms. To do so she meticulously researched all Robert Adam’s original interiors, adapting the colour schemes only where it was necessary to reflect the fading visited on the furniture by the passage of time.
She was born Ursula Jane Kenyon-slaney on January 15 1920, daughter of Major Robert Kenyon-slaney by his first wife, the former Lady Mary Hamilton, daughter of the 3rd Duke of Abercorn. Janey’s paternal grandfather, William Kenyon-slaney, was the first person to score a goal in international football, when playing for England against Scotland in 1873.
One of three children, she was brought up at her father’s house, Hatton Grange in Shropshire, and educated at St James’s School, West Malvern. On leaving school she was immediately taken up by a glamorous set which included the family of Joe Kennedy, then American ambassador in London.
Her best friend at this time was Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen (known as “Kick”), who later married William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, and was killed in a plane crash in 1948. Janey was on holiday with the Kennedy family in the South of France when war broke out in 1939, and she and Kick had to make a hasty return to Britain, boarding the train while still wearing their bathing costumes.
She then attracted the attention of the soigné film star David Niven, to whom she is said have been briefly engaged, before marrying, at the age of only 20, Peter Lindsay, who developed the French ski resort of Méribel. At the beginning of the war Janey trained as a nurse in London, but she soon transferred to a clerical role at SOE and was sent to Ceylon, where she became a close confidante of Lord Mountbatten, then Supreme Allied Commander South-east Asia.
Her marriage to Lindsay broke down, and in 1946 she took as her second husband Max Aitken, the war hero and son of Lord Beaverbrook. They had two daughters before the marriage was dissolved in 1950.
The following year she married Robin Compton; curiously, his father, Eddy, had many years earlier proposed unsuccessfully to her mother, Mary.
Having left her mark on Newby Hall, Janey Compton was recruited by Richard Broyd’s Historic House Hotels Group, for which she redecorated and restored Middlethorpe Hall, near York, and Hartwell House, near Aylesbury. She also advised on the interior of the Cadogan Hotel in London.
Robin Compton died in 2009, and she is survived by their two sons and by the two daughters of her second marriage. Janey Compton, born January 15 1920, died April 7 2012