AMERICAN HEIRESS SAVES ENGLISH CASTLE
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It was in 1926 that American-born Olive Wilson Filmer, later to become Lady Baillie, followed in the footsteps of six of England’s medieval queens and fell in love with Leeds Castle – one of England’s top ten historic houses welcoming almost 500,000 visitors from Britain and overseas each year.
The daughter of White House favourite Pauline Whitney, and the British aristocrat Almeric Paget, Lord Queenborough, Olive succeeded in buying this romantic Kent castle for $873,000 in the face of competition from newspaper tycoon Randolph Hearst.
But this was just the first step. Olive, the grand-daughter of former US Navy Secretary William Whitney, devoted the remainder of her life and $485,000 of her Whitney oil, real estate and railroad inheritance to restoring the moated castle, which dates from Norman times, and its 500 acres of rolling parkland in south east England.
Olive drew on the best architects and artistic advisers in Europe and America, including Stéphane Boudin, Armand-Albert Rateau and Russell Page, to restore the ancient castle and transform the Gloriette into a Gothic fantasy.
A society hostess, Olive brought royalty, politicians and stars of stage and screen to Leeds Castle including Edward VIII, the Grand Duke Dimitri of Russia, Douglas Fairbanks junior and senior, James Stewart, Errol Flynn and Charlie Chaplin.
The first link in the Leeds Castle’s American connection dates from 1675 when the Castle’s owner was Lord Culpeper. King Charles II gave him more than five million acres of the New World, making him ‘Lord Proprietor’ of what was to become the heartland of colonial North America - about a fifth of the present state of Virginia.
Lord Culpeper travelled to the New World to take up the post of Governor of Virginia, he and his immediate heirs becoming the greatest landowners in American history.
The 6th Lord Fairfax who inherited Leeds Castle emigrated to America in 1745 to secure tenure of the family’s huge Virginia landholding.
Lord Fairfax needed someone to survey part of his under-developed estates on the wild western Virginian frontier. The man he employed, and befriended,
was George Washington - later the first president of the independent American nation - whose family came from the Kent town of Maidstone, just four miles from Leeds Castle.While Olive maintained the castle’s links with America, she also continued the historical tradition of Leeds Castle as a ladies castle.
For most of the 274 years - from 1278 to 1552 - during royal ownership, it was customary for the castle to become part of a queen’s dowry, retained during widowhood. Queen Isabella, Anne of Bohemia, Joan of Navarre and Catherine de Valois were among residents of what became known as a ladies castle.
It was there that Catherine, as the widow of Henry V, is said to have met a young courtier named Henry Tudor. Their marriage founded the Tudor dynasty which gave the Castle its most famous owner, Henry VIII.
When Olive, Lady Baillie, died in 1974 she left Leeds Castle to a charitable trust which ensures its enjoyment by the public, including thousands of American visitors every year, and also promotes the castle for national and international medical seminars.
She also planned for its use by international statesmen. That has been fulfilled on at least one occasion, with the ‘Mini Camp David’ of 1978 involving
US Foreign Secretary Cyrus Vance, General Moyshe Dayan of Israel and Mohammed Ibrahim Kamel of Egypt.
Leeds Castle has a typically English quirk - a name more readily associated with an industrial city 250 miles to the north. The castle is, in fact, in the south eastern county of Kent – the Garden of England - and just one hour’s journey from central London by road or rail.
Leeds Castle is just four miles east of the Kent county town of Maidstone at junction 8 of the M20 motorway, midway between London and the Channel ports of Dover and Folkestone. The Castle is easily accessible from London and all areas of South East England.
The Castle is open daily from 10am-5pm (last admission) between March and October, and 10am - 3pm during the winter.
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