Geoffrey Hugh Berners JP.  1893 – 1972

Geoffrey Berners was the last and only male of the direct line in the House of Berners. He was born on 20th November 1893, while his parents were living at Hill House, Norwich. Geoffrey attended a preparatory boarding school in Broadstairs prior to attending Eton College from 1907 to 1911. At Eton, he spent two years with the Officer Training Corps as a trooper. Geoffrey was matriculated as a Commoner of Magdalene College, Oxford in October 1913. While there, he joined the OTC. 

On 5th August 1914, Geoffrey made application for appointment to the 3rd Battalion, Norfolk regiment, Special Reserve of Officers. The application was signed by his mother, Ethel of Hellesdon House, Norwich. The Special Reserve Officers received six months training and then returned to civilian life until they were required. 2^nd Lieutenant Berners had a history of illness during 1915, being given substantial periods of leave and light duties. He was  “Extremely susceptible to minor ailments” but declared fully fit in November 1915. The following year he left England for Basra and the brigades fighting in the Middle East. In early 1917 he was wounded in action – slight to left arm. Conditions were dire and hundreds of men went down with illness. Geoffrey developed chronic colitis and spent two months recuperating. He was invalided to India at the end of 1917 and remained there until being “dispersed” in May 1920 with the rank of Lieutenant.

Geoffrey was appointed a magistrate for East Suffolk in 1923. In February the following year, his engagement to actress, winter sports enthusiast and writer, Nesta Sawyer, was announced in The Sketch. Four months later the engagement was broken off.

In November 1929, Geoffrey married Elizabeth “Betty” Gordon, the daughter of a race horse trainer, at All Saint’s Church, Kensington. He was 36 years old; she was 19. Betty was an enthusiastic equestrian and exhibited hacks and hunters at Olympia. She was well known in Berkshire hunting circles. At this time, Ethel was living at Hill Lodge, Pangbourne; John at Woolverstone Park. 

Geoffrey and Betty were soon settled at Little Coxwell Grove. They had one child, Patricia Ann, born 2^nd September 1933 at Little Coxwell Grove, Faringdon. Ironically, close to the Faringdon Hall, home of Lord Berners who was no relation.

When John Berners died in March 1934, his estate was valued at £1,180,099. Colossal death duties and land taxes accrued of £400,000. Something had to be done.

Six months after his father’s death, the 3-acre site on which the Middlesex hospital stood, leased from the Berners Estate until 2753, was bought by the hospital trust for an undisclosed sum. Geoffrey was advised to further realize assets. Sales promptly began, leaving the estate concentrated in the two blocks between Wells and Newman Streets. Over the following years, most of the properties still in Berners’ ownership were clustered north of Eastcastle Street and west of Newman Street. 

In 1935, the Woolverstone Park Estate was offered “To be LET for a period of years.”  There were no takers. Two years later, Geoffrey decided to “dispose”  of the Woolverstone Park Estate entirely: mansion, 6,042 acres, land and houses in seven parishes, an estate covering 10 square miles of beautiful, unspoilt countryside. Plans for a resort based around Pin Mill were muted. 

The estate was deteriorating with an absentee landlord. By 1936, the mansion was shuttered and barred. Few workers remained. A caretaker remained in a wing of the ancestral mansion.

Geoffrey would also dispose of much of the contents built up over the previous two hundred years, having been left everything by his father: library of 4,000 volumes; oil paintings, water colours and engravings; furniture by Adam and Hepplewhite, household china, glass and copper. The “Sale of Furniture” took place on 27^th October 1937. 

The Sale of the Woolverstone Hall Estate itself, all 6,042 acres,  took place on 1^St December. It was bought as a single lot by the Nuffield Trust for Oxford University a cost £185,000, just under half the required death duties. 

Geoffrey lived for another 45 years in Oxfordshire and died in February 1972.

The House of Berners, which for nearly two hundred years had been synonymous with Woolverstone, had passed on.