Duke of Bedford, Who Opened His Home to the Public -- Rest in Peace

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Subject: Duke of Bedford, Who Opened His Home to the Public

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Dies at 85

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Date Posted: October 29, 2002 3:31:16 EDT

The 13th Duke of Bedford, who turned his ancient seat, Woburn Abbey, into a tourist attraction � complete with amusement park and safari park � to keep it in his family, died on Friday in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 85.

Born John Robert Russell, he faced heavy taxes after the deaths of his father and grandfather. He overcame his innate shyness to promote Woburn Abbey, north of London, and was one of the first members of the British aristocracy to capitalize on the historic value of his home.

The abbey and its 16,000-acre estate, once the site of a Cistercian abbey, had belonged to the Russell family since King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the 16th century. But by the time the duke inherited it in 1953, it was almost derelict.

To the horror of some aristocrats, the duke installed an amusement park, souvenir shop and safari park and offered paying guests the opportunity to have dinner with the family. He even allowed a nudist film to be shot on the grounds.

"I do not relish the scorn of the peerage, but it is better to be looked down on than overlooked," he once remarked.

The gambit allowed the family to keep and restore the house, which now receives more than 1.5 million visitors a year.

The duke once mused that his family "thought themselves slightly grander than God." His grandfather, known as Spinach, was a colorful character but not given to generosity; the duke once recalled that he had to eat chocolates that had been put out for the family parrots.

For many years, the duke was unaware that he was to inherit a title. "I remember reading in the newspaper of the Duchess of Bedford breaking the record for a flight to South Africa," he recalled. "I said to a maid who was working in our house, 'That sounds a very brave woman.'

"She said: 'Don't you know, that's your grandmother?' That was the first time I had ever heard of the dukes and duchesses of Bedford."

He was tutored at home and did not go to college. At age 18, as he studied in London in an attempt to get into college, his father gave him a small annual allowance. Friends bought him an overcoat after finding he did not own one.

In 1939, Spinach Russell disinherited his grandson because he disapproved of his marriage to a divorced woman, Clare Hollway. She died in 1945, and grandfather and grandson later reconciled.

The duke signed up with the Coldstream Guards in World War II, but suffered poor health and was soon discharged, going to work as a reporter on The Sunday Express newspaper. He later took his family to live in South Africa, but returned after inheriting the title.

With his second wife, Lydia, he set about restoring Woburn. The couple cleaned many of their possessions themselves, including an 800-piece S�vres porcelain dinner service presented to the wife of the fourth duke by King Louis XV of France.

Trustees sold part of the estate to meet millions of pounds in death duties, but the duke resisted their requests to sell Woburn itself.

"I have learned the most important lesson of my life from opening Woburn," he recalled. "It is that the pleasure you give to other people is the most rewarding thing in the world. I regard it as the main purpose of my life, to keep Woburn Abbey for my family, and I am convinced that my way is the best way of doing this."

He married his third wife, Nicole, in 1960, and in 1974 handed over the running of the estate to his eldest son, (Henry) Robin Ian Russell, Marquess of Tavistock, and the couple moved abroad.

He is survived by his wife, his son Robin, and another son, Lord Rudolf Russell, from his first marriage, and Lord Francis Russell, the son from his second marriage.

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Lydia, Duchess of Bedford, 88, Pioneer in Noble-Tourism	died July 25, 2006	August 21, 2006 4:56:52 EDT