DEATH OF BIG LANDOWNER

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27097, 21 July 1953, Page 9

DEATH OF BIG LANDOWNER

Duke Of Westminster (Rec. 9.30 p.m.) LONDON, July 20. The Duke of Westminster, one of Britain’s wealthiest peers, has died at his home, Loch More Lodge, Sutherlandshire. He had been ill with coronary thrombosis. The Duke, who was born in 1879, was the son of Victor Alexander, Earl Grosvenor, and Lady Sibell Mary Lumley. He succeeded his grandfather as second Duke of Westminster in 1899. He served as an aide de camp to Viscount Milner and to Lord Roberts in South Africa in 1899 and 1900. He was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the Queen’s Medal with fitfe clasps. The Duke saw service during the First World War, and was awarded the D.S.O. At one time, he was personal assistant to "the Controller of the Mechanical Department, Ministry of Munitions.

The Duke owned about 30,000 acres in Cheshire and Flintshire, and an estate in Scotland. His properties in London totalled 600 acres, and were valued before the Second World War at £20,000,000. This year, he bought valuable properties in Australian cities. t The Duke was married for the fourth time in 1947—t0 Miss Anne Wmifred Sullivan, an Irishwoman who was then 33. The Duke had no son. and the dukedom now passes to a cousin, Mr William Grosvenor, a 59-year-old bachelor. The heir is an invalid, and lives in retirement. The dukedom was created in 1874.