‘Bloody-minded’ countess tried to close down UK’S oldest polo club
Stepson Earl Bathurst speaks of long-running family feud over Royal favourite Cirencester Park
A DOWAGER countess who tried to shut down the Royal family’s favourite polo club was “just bloody-minded”, her stepson Earl Bathurst said as he spoke frankly of their long-running feud.
The 9th Earl Bathurst, of Cirencester Park, said the trustees of his late father’s estate had eventually overruled his stepmother, the Dowager Countess Bathurst, after she attempted to revoke the licence of the oldest polo club in the country. In the latest of a series of public volleys, the Earl said the outcome, in which trustees “forced her hand” to keep the club running, had “annoyed her even more”.
Cirencester Park Polo Club is known as a favourite of the Prince of Wales, Duke of Cambridge and Duke of Sussex, who have all been photographed there, along with Diana, Princess of Wales. The Duke of Edinburgh played there in the Sixties.
Founded in 1894, it was left at risk of closure in 2011 after the Dowager Countess, Gloria Clarry, declined to renew the lease on its Ivy Lodge ground.
The decision was made a month after the death of the 8th Earl, also the club’s former president, when she owned 3,000 acres of land that included the polo park clubhouse and an access road.
She later went on to refuse to renew the lease on the local hospital car park, and unsuccessfully went to the High Court in 2017 aged 89 for the right to the “use and enjoyment” of the estimated £13million worth of family heirlooms at Cirencester Park after she had moved out.
At the time, she was reported to have relented on the polo club lease and it survived intact, with the Earl calling it a “glitch” in the club’s history.
She died in 2018, aged 90, with heirlooms from her estate selling for £1.8 million at Christie’s.
The Earl, Allen Bathurst, 60, has now given an interview to Tatler magazine about Cirencester Park and its renewal. “To be honest, she was just bloodyminded,” he said of his late stepmother’s decision on the polo club. “The club was on a licence from year to year. Then, a month after my father died, she was theoretically in charge and she said, ‘No, there will be no licence.’ I’m not even sure why. “Luckily, we had managed to get a lot of my father’s land into a trust and the trustees said, ‘Why on earth aren’t you letting this go ahead?’ and forced her hand, and that annoyed her even more.” Now, he said: “We have been able to take the reins off, as it were, so the clubhouse has undergone a huge transformation, and with so much buzz and excitement around it, it’s somewhere you want to be.”
At the time of the dispute in 2011, Richard Britten-long, a former chairman of the polo club, said the countess had opposed the commercialisation of the game, preferring it to be “restored to gentlemen’s polo at the weekend”.
The magazine described the Dowager Countess’s “40year reign of terror” which saw her alienate “most of the townspeople, the estate workers and, worst of all, her own family, bequeathing £33 million of their money to two interior designer friends”. Speaking of family finances now, the Earl said: “It has not made money for a great number of years.
“My father in particular, the farming didn’t work for him, which is one of the reasons I came back and took over the farms. We had crippling death duties following the war – it devastated things for us.
“It sounds like a long time ago, but actually 60 years in the history of an estate like this is nothing, and we were really struggling.
“Bits have been sold off, bits have been added, there is much more of a commercial attitude being taken now than previously.”
He is now running Cirencester Park with the help of his son, Lord Apsley.
“It’s less of a succession, more of an integration, a collaboration,” Lord Apsley said.
The full feature is published in the November issue of Tatler, out in print and digital on Thursday.
When it was reported in 2013 that the Dowager Countess had closed the Cirencester Hospital car park on land she owned, the Earl said: “She is the owner and can do exactly what she wants with it. I’m not in a position to be able to influence her.
“As president of the Cirencester Hospital League of Friends, I feel terrible. I hope she sees sense.”
Last year, when his stepmother’s estate was put up for sale across four lots at Christie’s, he told a newspaper: “This is a terrible tragedy and incredibly sad for my family to see long-term possessions of historical importance being hawked for sale to the highest bidder.
“This callous woman came into the family and we welcomed her. My father entrusted her with these precious possessions with his clear understanding and belief they would be returned to the family on her death.”