Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Peeresses’ Robe worn by Mary Cholmondeley, Lady Delamere, at the Coronation of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II, by Norman Hartnell

One of the new robes made in red velvet with an ermine collar and trimmings, designed specifically for the Coronation of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II by Messrs. Norman Hartnell, of Bruton Street, London, in its original box with named label, addressed to ‘Lady Delamere, Six Mile Bottom, Newmarket’, very good condition £600-£800

Mary Cholmondeley, Lady Delamere, was born Ruth Mary Clarisse Ashley in Stanmore, Middlesex, on 22 July 1906. The youngest daughter of Colonel Wilfrid Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple and Amalia Mary Maud Cassel, a daughter of Sir Ernest Cassel, a Prussian-born Jewish banker, who later became a British subject and converted to Catholicism. Upon his death in 1921, she inherited an estate including a large Tudor manor house in Six Mile Bottom, Newmarket, Suffolk, and half of his fortune - The Cincinnati Enquirer referred to her as ‘England's wealthiest girl’, when reporting on her first marriage. Her older sister was Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma and her paternal grandfather, Evelyn Ashley, was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, a Member of Parliament, and the younger son of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.

In 1927, she married Captain Alec Cunningham-Reid, a military officer and politician. They had two children, Michael Duncan Alec Cunningham-Reid and Noel Robert Cunningham-Reid. On their honeymoon, she insisted that they share her wealth because ‘no decent woman likes to have a man live with her in charity’, but when they divorced in 1940, Cunningham-Reid sued for half of her $400,000 annual income. On 3 September 1940, she married for a second time to Major Ernest Laurie Gardner, who she divorced in 1943 before marrying Thomas Cholmondeley, 4th Baron Delamere, the following year. They divorced in 1955. Lady Delamere died, aged 80, on 10 October 1986.

Sold together with a copy photograph of Lady Delamere in her coronation outfit and a delightfully personal, original hand-written letter from Earl Mountbatten of Burma, on ‘Broadlands’ headed paper, dated 3 October 1972 and signed ‘your devoted old brother in law Dickie’ - His youngest daughter, Lady Pamela Hicks, described her aunt as ‘rather excitable’ and ‘flighty’.