Famous American People with Cotswold Connections

Nancy Lancaster (1897 – 1994)

Nancy Lancaster was a crucial figure in 20th-century interior English Country House "design look".

Born Nancy Keene Perkins at her maternal grandfather's farm, Mirador, in Greenwood, near Charlottesville, Virginia, and brought up in Richmond and New York City, she was the elder daughter of Thomas Moncure Perkins, a Virginia cotton broker, and his wife, Elizabeth Langhorne.

Nancy Lancaster was also a niece of Nancy Astor, the British politician, and of Irene Gibson, the wife of the  artist Charles Dana Gibson. Her cousin Joyce Grenfell was a celebrated British  actress.

In the 1920s, as Nancy Tree, she was principally responsible for creating the "English country house look" - a romantic, patrician, uncluttered style which has had a profound effect on English interior design, notably through the influence of her company Colefax & Fowler.

A woman of wit, style and beauty, she looked like a Gainsborough duchess and was the star of many anecdotes - "Paint it the colour of elephant's breath," she once commanded a decorator.

All her work was notable for its sense of scale, boldness, wit and mellowness. Her houses seemed to convey the essence of all that was best in English country life.

She was totally committed to England, and at the beginning of the Second World War became a British citizen out of solidarity, but was American by birth, a survivor of the world of Henry James.

But it was at Ditchley Park near Chipping Norton in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, which the Trees bought from Viscount Dillon in 1933, that Nancy Tree came into her own. She and her husband made of that vast Palladian pile one of the most comfortable of country houses, with central heating and en suite bathrooms.

Winston Churchill used to spend his weekends there during the Second World War, when the danger of bombing prevented him going to Chequers or Chartwell.

But the Trees' marriage was dissolved in 1947, and their idyll at Ditchley Park came to an end. The next year she married Lt-Col Claude Lancaster, MP, the owner of Kelmarsh; they soon separated.

Consuelo Vanderbilt

Consuelo Vanderbilt  (1877-1964) was married to the 9th Duke of Marlborough (that made her the Duchess of Marlborough) and was Winston Churchill's cousin by marriage. They married on 6 November 1895 at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in the most prestigious Gilded Age wedding. Her father gave the Duke $2.5 million, which he desperately needed to make repairs and renovations to Blenheim Palace. 

Consuelo did not want to marry the Duke. Her mother (Alva Vanderbilt) insisted going so far as to feign illness. The marriage proved a disaster.

The Duke of Marlborough was ill-tempered and critical of Consuelo. They had two sons, but the Duke made no real effort to make the marriage work once he got his hands on some of the funds he wanted to renovate Blenheim Palace, the family home.

He was increasingly critical of everything she attempted. The relationship was not helped by the fact that her mother-in-law despised her. The boys came soon after the marriage. Thereafter the two were increasingly estranged. They separated after 11 years of marriage in 1906.

She had a more liberal outlook than her husband and changed with the times. She emerged as a popular personality in Edwardian England while her husband became increasingly withdrawn. Her success was no mean feat in a society which was basically hostile to American heiresses. (Consuelo and Jennie Jerome were the notable exceptions).

Winston Churchill and other notables were friends. Consuelo found her niche with philanthropy. She emerged as a conservative feminist and helped run several projects for the underprivlidged. Even so, she remained a snob particularly with her anti-Semitism leanings. She was a popular public speaker on both topics. She later married French aviator Jacques Balsan in 1921. 

For further information and portrait by John Singer Sargent.