Like the Lord Falmouth depicted in Winston Graham’s Poldark novels, the 9th Viscount Falmouth was one of the dominant political figures of Cornwall. Yet grand balls at Tregothnan and a nephew rescued from a French prison by the eponymous hero Ross Poldark were not George Boscawen’s style.
He was the largest landowner in the county, with an estate almost twice the size of the Prince of Wales’s 20,000-acre Duchy of Cornwall holdings. Much of his life was devoted to the area, where the family still appoint Church of England priests in five parishes near Truro.
Boscawen took his seat in the Lords in 1962. His interests in parliament included listed buildings and championing Cornwall, and in 1965 he intervened during a debate on redundancy payment legislation. Along with many hereditary peers he left in the reform of 1999, though he had effectively quit in 1977 on being appointed lord-lieutenant of Cornwall, an office he held until 1994. During that time he not only represented the Queen at official functions but also dealt with the many donations that poured in after the Penlee lifeboat tragedy of December 1981. He was the last chairman of Truro Cathedral School, which was founded in 1549 and closed its doors in 1982.
Like his forebears Boscawen was a great lover of rare plants, financing plant-hunting expeditions to far-flung corners of the world. In recent years the Tregothnan estate has moved into growing tea and producing honey, though the house, grounds and botanical gardens are open only occasionally or by appointment.
George Hugh Boscawen was born at Mereworth, in Kent, in 1919, the second of five children of the 8th Viscount Falmouth, an engineer who became chairman of Imperial College London; two uncles were killed in the Great War. His mother was Mary Meynell, CBE, a descendant of Lord Grey, spearhead of the Reform Bill; she was vice-chairwoman of the Conservative Party in the 1930s and deputy chairwoman of the Red Cross in the 1950s. Among George’s celebrated ancestors was Admiral Edward Boscawen, victor over a French fleet off Lagos in 1759.
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An older brother, Lieutenant Evelyn Boscawen, was killed near Calais in May 1940 during the retreat to Dunkirk, though his remains were not identified until 50 years later. Three younger siblings, Henry, Robert and Mary, also predeceased George.
The viscountcy had been created in 1720 for Hugh Boscawen, the scion of an ancient Cornish family that, according to The Sunday Times Rich List, “goes back to 1264 and reaches the present via a string of beheadings and rebellions”. It was his reward for what Country Life magazine described as “zealous personal services to George I”. The 3rd viscount is the Poldark character while in March 1829 the 4th viscount (who was also Earl of Falmouth) was Lord Winchilsea’s second in his duel with the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, over Wellington’s support for Catholic emancipation.
The 6th viscount was a distinguished horse breeder and racer; the 7th fought in the Anglo-Egyptian war of 1882, took part in the Nile expedition of 1894-95 and, according to the biographer Anne Sebba, may have been the biological father of John Strange Spencer-Churchill, Winston Churchill’s younger brother.
Young George grew up at Tregothnan, near Truro, the splendid Georgian Tudor-style mansion by William Wilkins that looks out over the River Fal. He was educated at Eton College and was called up in 1939, guarding Churchill at Chequers in the early months of the war before serving as a captain with the Coldstream Guards and being mentioned in despatches. Wounded in action in Italy, he later said he was grateful that “German munitions exploded upwards rather than sideways”. Another harrowing experience was when the ship immediately in front of the one he was sailing on was sunk by enemy fire in the Mediterranean.
Before the war he had started a history degree at Trinity College, Cambridge. On demobilisation he switched to land economy and on graduating took over the family’s estates in Kent, growing hops, which were picked by hand by seasonal workers from the East End of London. He met Elizabeth Browne through the Young Farmers’ Club and they were married in 1953. Elizabeth, who in 2002 was appointed OBE for charitable services in Cornwall, died in 2007 and he is survived by their sons: Evelyn, who manages the Tregothnan estate and becomes the 10th viscount; Nicholas, who owns an ice cream company; Charles, a retired solicitor in Suffolk; and Vere, a stockbroker.
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Boscawen succeeded his father in the viscountcy in 1962, when he took over the running of the Cornish estates. At various times he was president and chairman of the Royal Cornwall Show, the development of which he linked to the arrival of the railway. He described himself as “not so much a railway buff as a railway enthusiast”, with a large collection of books on the subject. In 1999 he returned permanently to Kent.
A fit and active man, he loved trout fishing. His other interests included horology and he learnt to play the piano in his seventies. He was also a great reader, devouring biographies and history books. Even though he did not identify closely with Lord Falmouth of the Poldark books, he remained friends with Graham until the author’s death in 2003.
Viscount Falmouth, landowner, was born on October 31, 1919. He died on March 7, 2022, aged 102