Content provided in partnership with
Obituary: Sir Francis Dashwood Bt
Independent, The (London), Mar 22, 2000 by John Barnes
WHEN PEOPLE describe a man, however affectionately, as a great character, or somewhat larger than life, they often mean that he could be difficult. Francis Dashwood would not have cared about that, but he would have enjoyed the tributes paid to his often flamboyant life style and would have valued the genuine regard and affection felt by many of those who worked for him or lived close to the family estate, West Wycombe Park, in Buckinghamshire.
- Most Popular Articles in News
- The Ten Best Laptop bags
- Tata plans cheapest-ever car for Indian market
- GLOBALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE THIRD WORLD
- Corn is good for you; Corn is not only a tasty treat, but also a cereal that ...
- THE 50 BEST STYLISH HANDBAGS TO CARRY
- More »
He had a particular sense of history and was dismayed that he had not inherited the famous estate at West Wycombe, which his father, the 10th baronet, had transferred to the National Trust in 1944. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the house and its grounds and, if asked a question to which he did not know the answer, was invariably able to put his hands on a document or drawing that would give him the information required. Part of his life's work was to recover the furniture from the house which his father had sold, but he also wanted to recapture something of the style and zest for living of the 18th century. If he could not reacquire the house, he wished to see it as it was in its heyday.
He was not a direct descendant of the infamous second baronet, Sir Francis Dashwood, whose name is indelibly associated with the Hell- Fire Club, but that did not lessen his enthusiasm for family lore, much of which was recounted in the highly entertaining book The Dashwoods of West Wycombe, part history, part memoir, which Dashwood published in 1987. The stories of the family's sexual frolics, he wrote, ranged from the heroic to the hilarious.
With a ribald sense of humour he would point out memorably that one of the classical temples in the gardens, the Temple of Venus, was built on the mound of Venus and he claimed that the grounds were designed on the shape of a woman's body. Nevertheless he was sceptical about the motives for his 18th-century ancestor's recreation of the Bacchanalia and stories that he indulged in black magic, preferring to believe that the "riotous profane club" was one hell of an excuse for a party.
Francis Dashwood was born in 1925 and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He captained the school, but preferred to recall that he had often been asked to stand in for the regular drummer in Humphrey Lyttelton's jazz band. The Russian that he learnt at Eton stood him in good stead when he later sold machine tools to the Soviet Union, but it may also have been the reason that he found himself in intelligence during the closing stages of the Second World War. However he was sent instead to the Far East, cracking Japanese codes.
After the war he returned to his studies at Oxford, where he took a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, won a Henry Fellowship and in 1948 went to the Harvard Business School to study business administration.
He worked briefly for the Aluminium Company of Canada before returning to Britain to work for EMI at Hayes in Middlesex. Subsequently he became a sales representative for Molins Machine Company of Saunderton in Buckinghamshire. He had already launched in 1950 a company to exploit the Hell-Fire Caves, with a view to raising money to restore historic houses and he installed waxwork tableaux depicting the second baronet, his great friend Benjamin Franklin, the libertine and radical MP John Wilkes and equally pleasure- loving government minister the Earl of Sandwich.
Dashwood revelled in the famous exchange when Wilkes, in reply to Sandwich's observation that he did not know whether Wilkes would die of the pox or on the gallows, replied: "That depends, my Lord, on whether I first embrace your Lordship's principles or your Lordship's mistress." The figures Dashwood installed depicting figures dressed as priests and nuns preparing for an orgy caused a considerable stir and provoked unavailing remonstrances from his parish priest.
He flirted with the idea of a political career, serving on the Buckinghamshire County Council in 1951-52, and securing adoption as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for West Bromwich. Although he cut the Labour majority in the 1955 general election, he had no hope of taking the seat and a subsequent by-election foray in a Labour marginal at Gloucester in 1957 coincided with his party's post- Suez traumas. The intervention of a Liberal candidate meant that he lost heavily, although it is worth adding that his successor failed to take the seat from John Diamond (now Lord Diamond) in the 1959 general election.
His father handed over the West Wycombe estate in 1956 and Dashwood plunged into the work of running it with his usual energy and enthusiasm. The farmers on the estate recall him as "very involved" and as "displaying a surprising knowledge of agricultural matters". He was to take over the lease of the house itself in 1963 and inherited the baronetcy on his father's death in 1966.
He was an enlightened landlord, engaging on major works of restoration that extended to the Church of St Lawrence, where he was responsible for replacing the organ, and he took an active interest in the St Lawrence Church Trust. In 1962 he planned a model development to be known as Dashwood Village on a large site overlooking the park. Only 30 of the 600 houses planned were ever built.
