Gladys Eveline Schumacher



Pallinghurst Park 1890-1919

Chapter 10. Three Schumacher Daughters, and their Descendents

1. Gladys, Mrs Harold Bastow, 1876-1930

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Gladys Eveline Schumacher (above) was born in 1876. She is the only member of the Schumacher family apart from her brother Raymond of whom it has been possible to obtain photographs.

In 1907, Gladys married Lieutenant Harold Vermuden Bastow, only son of Revd Thomas Bastow - rector of the delightfully named village of Peatling Parva, Leicestershire - at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate. Gladys was presented at Court , with her sister Elsa, by her mother in 1908 “on her marriage” (having previously been presented in 1897 upon her 21st birthday). They set up home (certainly by 1909) in York at 12 St Peter’s Grove, a leafy residential area where the substantial houses would have been fairly new at the time. In the 1911 census, both are there, together with three year old Diana and 4 months old Gwen. It was near Harold’s regiment, but a long way from Gladys’s London and Sussex roots. Harold was abroad for much of the war. Her father died in 1915, and there were financial problems relating to his lost funds in Russia, described elsewhere in this book. Pallinghurst was sold in 1919, and no doubt some sort of inheritance came her way so at about this time they purchased a property in Sunninghill near Ascot, Berkshire, a house called Crossways (the site is now a collection of shops and small businesses), but adverts in The Times, the first in August 1920, show that this 8-bed country house was let, furnished, by Mrs HV Bastow, at a weekly rate of 12 guineas. Whilst Harold was quartered with his regiment, Gladys must have spent much time alone. In The Times Court Circular of 19 Nov 1920, she placed an announcement that she (not ‘they’) would return “to 73 St James’s Street which would be her permanent winter address”.

In 1923 they moved again to Ray Lodge, Lingfield, Surrey (see curious extract from The Times, 5 April 1924, right, which was the second letter of appreciation she had written). The going rate for the job was £40 - £50. It may be that Maj Bastow felt he owed something to ex-servicemen who might otherwise be unemployed – the advertisements customarily referred to ‘officer’s family’.. Why else would he entrust his wife to being cared for by three men at a time? By 1927, the adverts referred to mixed couples. Perhaps by then the supply of single ex-servicemen was poor – in 1928 the request was for two people! The number of these adverts suggest that staff did not stay long, or were becoming hard to find in the post-war world, in which the rate for the job was only jointly £75.

The young Lt Bastow served in the Boer War, where it is entirely possible he came to know his future brother in law Raymond Schumacher (both were in uniform in Johannesburg at the same time), in The Prince of Wales Own (Yorkshire Regt), commissioned 2nd Lt in 1897. He embarked with the 7th Division in the Kildonan Castle at Southampton 7 May 1900. He saw action in several engagements as well as the march from Bloemfontein to Pretoria He returned, promoted to Lieutenant, on the Galician, 30 Aug 1902. He was awarded two medals. In 1903 he was seconded to the Colonial Office, and served with the Northern Nigeria Police (Lord Lugard having taken the Protectorate by force only the previous year). In 1907, about to be married, he was selected as adjutant to the Volunteer Battalion of the West Yorkshires, a territorial regt. In the same year, he was made Captain, and presented to the King at a Levee “on return from active service”. In 1911 he was appointed their signalling officer. (The Times, various dates 1897-1907). Left, Col Bastow.

He saw distinguished service in Mesopotamia where he was an ADC (mentioned in despatches), in Palestine (Gaza), where he was seconded to command his first battalion, 5th Royal Scots Fusiliers, and arriving in France 1918 he was wounded at the Battle of Reims, where he was mentioned in despatches three times, won the Croix de Guerre and DSO (invested 1919). The latter citation was for “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty” in a successful attack by his battalion, the 1st/5th Devonshires [to which he was seconded], new to the particular conditions they encountered1. He rose from Major to temporary Lt Col, commanding the Devonshires (1919, relinquished later the same year, although he styled himself Col or Lt Col in later civilian life, which he may have been entitled to do, as he used the title at the 185th Infantry Brigade dinner in 1929). In 1923 he was brigade major in the Green Howards. He returned from Bombay on the Macedonia in 1924, giving India as his last permanent residence, and his London address as The Conservative Club in St James’s.

He had recovered enough from his wife’s early death (see below) to attend the Green Howards dinner in 1931, and again in 1933, and 1935 (also attending 185th Inf Bde dinner that year), and for some years after. He is also recorded returning from a winter holiday on the Kaisar-i –Hind from Marseilles in February 1932.

In 1903 he was playing rackets (the spelling evolved but not consistently in The Times, to racquets) in the military championship, though he did not do very well. His racquet skills had improved considerably by 1906, but he still lost his match! A later match was described in detail, (below, in The Times 17 Mar 1909), and in 1921 he was described as “one of the four great racquet players who were at Harrow at the same time”, also referring to as memorable match he had played in India. In 1921, when commanding in the Green Howards, he was still playing at the age of 43. He continued to lose more often than he won, but The Times correspondent seemed somewhat in awe, even referring to his having learned the game at Elstree, under F Meyrick-Jones.

However, in that year he began to play lawn tennis doubles at the services championship at Queen’s Club partnering fellow Green Howards officer Maj Cumberledge with whom he had played racquets. They won (in the first round only). In 1925, he played doubles at the Cranleigh Tournament, just a few miles from his wife Gladys’s childhood home in Rudgwick! In 1925 he also began to play competitive squash rackets, both in the inaugural Army championship at Queen’s Club and at the northern championship at St Peter’s School, York. His devotion to racquet sports extended in 1926 to mixed doubles lawn tennis at East Grinstead, partnering Miss H Powell, and entering the singles at Cranleigh. In 1927 he played at Reigate, East Grinstead, East Kent and Thanet. Finding time for all these tournaments suggests that he was now discharged from the Army. He also began to call himself Lt Col even in tennis entries in 1928, for example at Reigate, East Grinstead and Cranleigh whilst experimenting with plain Col at Tunbridge Wells, having been Major two months earlier at Harpenden! Nevertheless his military life had left him a fit and healthy man (unlike many), and not one to settle down to merely tending the garden. Nevertheless he did stop competitive sport after the 1928 season. In 1936 having moved to Lindsay Manor, Westbourne in Bournemouth, where his second wife came from, he took up bridge, as Hon Secretary of the Wessex Club. He finally lived at Fawley, Lindsay Road, Westbourne.

Gladys took to rearing chicken, and in 1926, at the Agricultural Hall, shared the prize for buff Sussex, while at the Poultry Show she won with brown Sussex. In 1928 her Sussex again did well at the Poultry Show. Today, these are rare breeds, kept by the author’s wife! Gladys died suddenly at Lingfield in 1930, where she was buried. She was only 54. At the marriage of his daughter Gwendoline in 1934 Harold gave his address as 21 Penywern Road SW5. He remarried to Miss Winifred Freer in 1935. She died in 1953, and he died in 1955 when he was 77, at his daughter Gladys’s home in Oxfordshire. After so many mentions and announcements in The Times over the years, the announcement of his death was never placed.

Their children were Alexandra Diana Mary, born 1907, at 12 St Peter’s Grove, York, Gwendoline Louise, 1911, at 64 Ebury St, London SW and Gladys Gerardine (sic) Priscilla, 1913, also in London, but not announced in The Times, as were the first two.

(Alexandra) Diana was married to an artist, Anthony Penton Brown in Berkhamstead in 1938. There were no children. She died in North Dorset in 1990.

Gwen married John Courtenay Morland, of Lamberhurst, Kent, in 1934. His father was also a Lt Col. They had one son. Gwen also had a daughter from a subsequent marriage to Ft Lt William Williamson whom she married in Palestine in 1940. She died in ?Scotland.

Gladys, the youngest daughter, was also married in 1940, to Anthony DM Cox, who was from Devon, in Lingfield, Surrey in 1940. He was a history don and vice-master of University College, Oxford. They had three daughters, Amanda born near Uckfield, Sussex, has supplied really useful information on the Schumacher family history, including some documents and photos included here. Gladys died in Gloucestershire in 2002.

2. Vera, Mrs Sydney Hayley, 1884-1959

Vera Madeleine Florence Schumacher was born 1884. She was presented at Court by her mother in 1904. In 1911 she was still with her parents at Pallinghurst. Vera was married, soon after her father died, to Major Sydney Thomas Hayley, a cavalry officer of Glen Eyre, Bassett (North Stoneham) Southampton, in 1915. Glen Eyre was bought by Charles Pickering Hayley, his father, in 1912. In 1915 it was a large house set in 58 acres of ornamental grounds and woodland, and completely rural. Vera and Sydney were married at All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, and spent their honeymoon at the Park Lane home of Mrs Eckstein (The Times, 7 Aug 1915), who was the widow of Hermann Eckstein, the senior partner in the company H Eckstein & Co in which Vera’s brother, Raymond became a partner, the company he first worked for in Johannesburg. In wartime this was a generous offer at a time when travel was impossible and honeymoons short before a return to the war.

Sydney was born in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1879; his father Charles Hayley, was born in Jersey, and the children educated there at Elizabeth College (where Sydney and his brother Alec were in 1891), though the family were from Yorkshire. The firm of Charles P Hayley (later trading as Hayley & Kenny) was founded in Galle, Ceylon in 1878 (photo right). It is now one of the largest Sri Lankan multinationals, Hayleys PLC, accounting for 3.2 % of export income! It dates from the beginning of the tea and coir fibre trade in which many British firms participated, and branched out into plantations and many other businesses, both import and export. One thing they all had in common was that the brokers were awaiting the fast clippers in Mincing Lane in the City. When Sydney Hayley was posted his medals after the war it was to Messrs Price, Hickson & Co, colonial brokers and agents, at 4, Mincing Lane, in the City, that they were sent. It is probable that Sydney was back in Ceylon after leaving school, until the First World War. He would have met Vera perhaps on leave in UK following his tour in the BEF in 1914.

He was a member of the BEF in 1914 on the staff of the Army Ordnance Dept, and like Harold Bastow, and hundreds of other officers in the devastating trench warfare, rose from Captain to Major and temporary Lt Colonel, receiving a DSO, and 1914 Star.

Sydney and Vera Hayley lived at 4 Dawson Place W2 in 1920 and 21. From c1928 to c1939 they lived in Wimbledon at a house at Shenfield in The Drive. In that year he is recorded returning from Las Palmas on the Bratton Castle, to this address, his occupation ‘ex-army’. It seems likely that Sydney worked in the City, perhaps in connection with the family firm or their associated London agents2 Price, Hickson & Co (His brother Guy certainly worked for Price, Hickson in a senior capacity - letter to The Times, 24 Jan 1933). The London tea auction (the oldest commodity auction in the world) finally closed in 1998 as producer countries learnt to set up their own auctions. Sri Lankan (Ceylon) tea had first arrived there in 1873, a few years before Hayley started his company. By 1903, 30% of our tea came from Ceylon.

Evidence from his funeral (below) suggests that in retirement he may have moved to his father’s home, Glen Eyre, in Bassett, near Southampton (confirmed by two ship’s papers, below). Vera is known to have had three children, Walter in 1916, Robert in 1920, both born in London, and John in 1921 born in Swindon District. However, in the disembarkation list from a voyage from Rangoon in 1926 on the Gloucestershire, two children and two infants are listed, together with a nurse, and both parents (Vera also made the same voyage in 1923 and 1926, both on the Warwickshire, ships from Rangoon calling at Colombo, Ceylon. Walter married Mary Hill in Kent in 1953. They had a daughter Emma-Louise.

Sydney died “suddenly” in Axminster Devon in 1950, aged 71, perhaps on holiday. The funeral announced in The Times was at North Stoneham church, Southampton, the parish church of the family home at Bassett, where his father had also died in 1934. In 1950, Glen Eyre was encroached upon by the growing suburbs of the city, but Glen Eyre and Bassett Wood were still rural - just. Glen Eyre was purchased by the University of Southampton as a Hall of Residence in 1951, probably a sale brought about by Sydney’s death. It was then described in The Times (2 May 1952) as “in dignity and grace as nearly the modern equivalent of an Oxford or Cambridge College”. It is now much expanded and home to over 2000 students. Sydney and his brother Guy had been Charles Hayley’s executors. Guy, also a Lt Col, died at Faygate near Horsham. Two other brothers, Alec and Steuart, and possibly a third, Frederic, worked for the family company in Ceylon after their father’s retirement. Vera moved to an address in Surrey and died there in 1959, leaving over £60,000 gross in her will (The Times, 25 Jun 1959).

3. Elsa, Lady Cochrane, 1886-1966

Dorothea Marie Elsa Schumacher was born in 1886. She was known as Elsa. She was presented at Court in 1908, with her sister Gladys Bastow. She was living with her parents at the time of the 1911 census. By then, and at her marriage in the Belgrave Presbyterian Church in Halkin Street, London, W, and for the remainder of her life, she was Elsa Dorothea Marie Schumacher (Cochrane). Her husband was Sir Ernest Cecil Cochrane, 2nd Bt, born 1873, so several years her senior, graduate of Trinity College Dublin, a keen racehorse breeder, sportsman (football player), gardener (and exhibitor), Justice of the Peace, and theatre goer, who wrote two plays, performed on the London stage, under the pseudonym Ernest Cecil, A Matter of Fact (Comedy Theatre, 1921 ) and Monica (Everyman Theatre, 1924), and a Protestant.

His full title was “Baronet Cochrane of Woodbrook, Old Connaught, Bray, co. Wicklow, Lisgar Castle, Ballieborough, co. Cavan, and Kildare Street, Dublin, UK”, to which he succeeded in 1904; his father, Sir Henry, originally knighted in 1887, was invested as the first baronet in 1903 on the occasion of the first visit of King Edward VII to Ireland. The Cochrane coat of arms is taken from Burke’s Peerage & Baronetage.

As a boy at Woodbrook, Ernest would have been well down in the inheritance stakes as the sixth child, but his two elder brothers died as teenagers, leaving him as the oldest male. Woodbrook was a country house built by the Cochranes in Old Connaught, near Bray, just south of Dublin, in 1820. Latterly occupied by Sir Ernest’s younger brother, it is now an auction house. Sir Ernest had been a Captain in the Connaught Rangers, and trained as a barrister in London. He was Gentleman in Waiting to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1908-9, and a JP for Co Cavan. The Presbyterian Cochranes had come to Ireland from Scotland in the 17th century.3

His racing days were mainly in his youth, before he was married to Elsa, whereas his theatrical enthusiasm came later, in middle age. His racing interests made him a well known figure in the world of top racing deals. For example in Brighton he once paid 4,500 guineas without seeing the horse! In 1905, he made a well publicised visit to North America, taking with him a football team, The Pilgrims, with which he challenged the Americans to take up Association Football by offering a $525 prize and a cup. The New York Times, 12 Oct 1905, described him in detail. They said of him: “a well built stocky figure of medium height, rugged, with a glow of good healthy outdoor living; energetic, active and enthusiastic, beyond the usual among Englishmen… a tribute to the value of ‘association’ as a developer of physical manhood. With a ruddy, smooth shaven, pleasant face that suggests the hand of good fellowship even before it is extended”. It was also rumoured at the time that he was trying to set up a challenge for the America’s Cup, but the history of the race shows that there were no challenges between 1903 and 1920. He is recorded returning on the Baltic on 26 October. Incoming passenger lists show his first trip to New York was when he was a student aged 20 in 1893, and his last in 1937.

Sir Ernest and Lady Cochrane had several homes. In 1913 they were at The Raswell, Loxhill, Hascombe, Surrey (a 15th century cottage, which in 1984 included a deer park) and 47 Albert Court, London, SW. Elsa had became Lady Cochrane. Another London home was 55 Porchester Terrace, which Elsa must have received from her father, probably on her marriage, as that is about the time her parents moved out. Perhaps the Schumachers felt obliged to offer such a generous wedding settlement in view of the status of this marriage at the time. As the youngest daughter it was surely more than she would have expected. How much they lived there is uncertain. In 1924 on the birth of their second child Margaret they were living at 22 Kensington Palace Gardens, which he had had since at least 1915. The telephone directory lists Sir Ernest at Porchester Terrace in 1924 and 1926. Porchester Terrace was offered for sale in 1926 (see chapter 7), since demolished. In 1929 their address was 320 Earl’s Court Road. Sir Ernest had homes in North Berwick, and Redcastle Co Donegal.

Sir Ernest had one child (Beatrice) from a previous marriage (he divorced Ethel Davis in 1910), and in a court case in 1922 it was argued that the financial settlement made on the first child should not be to the detriment of the three from the second. The judge agreed. All the children should be treated equally. However, The Times reported it was subsequently dismissed on appeal.

His father had been the first Governing Director of Cantrell and Cochrane Ltd, mineral and aerated water manufacturers in Ireland, England and USA. Sir Ernest succeeded him as chairman, 1903-1925. His younger brother Stanley became Governing Director (later Sir Stanley when he was awarded a baronetcy in his own right, which became extinct on his death as he was unmarried). Sir Ernest was also chairman of Genval, Ltd, manufacturers of Genval springs and tonic waters, when the company issued shares in 1929. Genval-les-Eaux was a source in Belgium, and as well as the table water it produced, the company held the rights to the medicated tonic drink Phosferine. Sir Ernest was also Chairman of the Tati Concessions (1910), a colonial outpost on the Rhodesia-Bechuanaland border until its incorporation in the latter in 1911.

The Cantrell & Cochrane advertisements above began to appear regularly in The London Times from 18 April 1905, see below, soon after Sir Ernest had taken over.

The biggest market was in the south of England. Interestingly, in view of Sir Ernest’s theatre interests the company had the bulk of the theatre supply contracts in London.

The Irish press continues to refer to his descendents as being “from the drinks family”. The company maintained semi-independence within a Dublin holding company, Burke’s, until 1961 when a joint operation began with brewers Courage, Barclay & Simmonds, and then with Fremlins and Friary Meux in 1962, in a period of consolidation in the brewing trade, and their consequent acquisition soft drinks brands they seemed not to understand. In 1965 Schweppes, growing with the fast developing soft drinks market, took a large stake in the company. In the 1970s it became part of the Guinness group, and in the 1980s Grand Metropolitan, joining Coca-Cola. In 2004 Cantrell and Cochrane continued to transform themselves after 160 years in the market place into the Cantrell and Cochrane Group, now C&C Group, with strong presence in the cider market of UK and Ireland – the ubiquitous Magners Cider.

Lady Elsa and Sir Ernest were divorced in 1933 (The Times, 30 July 1932, left). There were three children of the marriage, Ernest in 1913, (Elizabeth) Margaret in 1915, Desmond in 1918, all born in London.

Their address at the time of the divorce was 120 Inverness Terrace Bayswater W2, where they had moved following the sale of Porchester Terrace in 1926/7. In 1938 she may have visited her sister Vera Hayley in Ceylon as she is recorded returning on the Oxfordshire sailing from Rangoon, probably via Colombo. Her address is recorded in ship’s manifest as 15 Basil Mansions, Basil St, London. In 1949, telephone directories show her living at The Dower House, Oxford (probably the Dower House, Whytham, on her brother’s estate). In 1951 she was at Holt House, Earls Colne, Essex. Lady Elsa died 7 June1966. There is no record in England of re-marriage, or of her death. It is possible she died in Beirut, where her son, Sir Desmond, lived, or in Ireland where other members of the family lived.

After the divorce, in 1933, Sir Ernest had homes at 33 Alfred Place, SW7, 32 Richmond Hill Court, Richmond and 69 Earls Court Square SW5. In 1938 he moved to 2 Cranley Court, Hove, Sussex where he remained for many years. Sir Ernest married twice more, first to Flora Sandström, a Finnish writer, in 1939, with whom he had one daughter, Jan, and then to Margaret Fowler. At the end of his life, he lived at Felstead, a house near Henfield, Sussex, Sussex, and died in Hassocks, aged 78 (Obituary, The Times, 8 March 1952, left).

Major Ernest Henry Cochrane MC, the eldest son, was gazetted as a lieutenant in 1937 in the Inniskilling Fusiliers, following education at Eton. He fought in the Second World War, but died in 1945 in Austria following an accident on active service, at the age of 32. He was unmarried. His certificate from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is below.

In Memory of

Major ERNEST HENRY COCHRANE, M C

66685, 2nd Bn., Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers

who died age 32

on 21 July 1945

Son of Sir Ernest Cochrane 2nd Bt., J.P., and of Lady Cochrane (nee Schumacher), of Coggeshall, Essex.

Remembered with honour

KLAGENFURT WAR CEMETERY

Elizabeth Margaret Cochrane married Professor Robert Elsworth Steen, son of David Steen, on 9 September 1939.   Professor Robert Elsworth Steen was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (F.R.C.P.I.) and had graduated with a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.). He was a paediatrician, the first Irishman to be elected President of the British Paediatric Association. They had two children, Sarah and (David) Michael. Prof Steen died in 1981, “physician, professor and musician”, and Elizabeth in 2002, at age of 87. They lived in Carrickmines, west Dublin, and were buried at St Patrick’s Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, near Old Connaught.

Of Lady Elsa’s grandchildren, Sarah married Capt Lewis Dixon-Brown. Their children are Elizabeth, Cecily and Nicola, all of whom carry Cochrane as their middle name.

Another, Michael Steen, born 1945, is an Associate of the Royal College of Music (A.R.C.M.). He wrote the book Guide to Directors Transactions, published 1983. He wrote the book Audits and Auditors - What the Public Thinks, published 1989, and Lives and Times of the Great Composers, published 2003, and Enchantress of Nations: Pauline Viardot - Soprano Muse and Lover in 2007. He went to Oxford University and became a chartered accountant working in the City for a number of companies.4 He married Rosemary Dodds. They have four children and he and Elizabeth live in Mattingley, Hampshire, a reversion to Elsa’s English upbringing, in what seemed to have become an Irish family. He received an OBE in 2007 for services to the gambling industry, as a commissioner on the Gambling Commission.

Major Sir Desmond Oriel Alastair George Weston Cochrane, youngest son, born in 1918, was christened at his uncle’s estate at Wytham, Raymond ffennell’s daughter Hazel was a sponsor. Desmond succeeded to the baronetcy in 1952, by accident of his elder brother’s early death. He served in the Second World War in the Lancashire Fusiliers, and was described as a “dashing officer”. Sir Desmond’s war service included time as Staff Captain, Northern Command, 1941, War Office, 1942 (at which time he acquired a London house, 6 Donne Place SW3, which he retained until 1954), GHQ Middle East Forces 1943, and Military Secretary to GOC 9th Army, 1944.

After the war, he was Honorary Consul-General of Ireland for Syria and the Lebanon, and Controller of Beirut Racecourse. Sir Desmond then became a banker, spending time in several financial service roles in the City and abroad. He and his aristocratic Lebanese-Italian wife, Yvonne Sursock (Lady Cochrane Sursock, or more correctly, Yvonne, Lady Cochrane Sursock, right), whom he married in 1946, had 4 children. His mother, styling herself Elsa, Lady Cochrane at the time of her son’s marriage, was living then at Old Stoneham near Coggeshall Essex.

The Sursock family originated in Istanbul, Turkey and were once very wealthy and influential prior to losing much of their land in Palestine. Palais Sursock (right), one of the few old houses to survive in Beirut is the main symbol of their former status. Yvonne is still alive, and is a very active environmentalist and particularly supports the protection of ancient buildings in the Lebanon, and the preservation of rural life through projects stemming the exodus to the cities. They have four children, (Henry) Marc, Alfred, Roderick and Isabelle, all of whom have Sursock as one of their middle name. Isabelle also has Elsa’s name, so perpetuating a Schumacher connection from her grandmother.

Sir Desmond Cochrane 1918-1979, obituary:

“The Arab World was greatly saddened by the sudden and unexpected death on the 12 March 1979 of Sir Desmond Cochrane, late Honorary Consul of the Republic of Ireland in Lebanon. Sir Desmond gave generous moral and material support to a wide variety of projects: he sponsored exhibitions on Yeats, Synge and Joyce; encouraged translations of Irish literature into Arabic; and was the main driving force behind the publication of the two first studies in Arabic on Yeats and Synge, and of several guides and handbooks on Ireland and her literary achievement. As a Diplomat he rendered invaluable service in strengthening Lebanese-Irish and Arab Irish relations, and it is mainly owing to his efforts that Ireland today enjoy so much goodwill and respect in the Arab World. In honour of this distinguished Irish Diplomat and patron of the arts, and in recognition of all that he has done for Ireland and Irish letters Dr Suheil Bushrui has dedicated his book, James Joyce An International Perspective, to his memory.”5

Sir (Henry) Marc Sursock Cochrane, born 1946, Sir Desmond’s eldest son, is the current and 4th baronet (succeeding to the title in 19796), also a banker and company director, with homes in London, Co Wicklow and Dublin (where he is trustee of various art institutions, and had been a beneficiary of the Irish property boom, and presumably now a victim of its collapse), and at Palais Sursock, Lebanon, with his wife, Hala es-Said. They have three children.

Alexander Desmond Sursock Cochrane (right) is one of Elsa’s great grandsons, and the heir to the baronetcy. Known as Alex, he is married to Alannah (Creative Director, Selfridges), daughter of Galen Weston, of the wealthy Canadian family which owns Associated British Foods and Ireland’s Brown Thomas. Since 2008 he has been based in a Chelsea studio, Alex Cochrane Architects. Some of their work is in Beirut, including a major contract for new housing in December 2009.7

References

Photographs of Gladys Schumacher and Harold Bastow, courtesy of Amanda Porter

1 Officers of the Green Howards 1688-1970, extracted by Amanda Porter

2 Ferguson’s Ceylon Directory, 1920/1 and 1930

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4 Debrett’s People of Today Online

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