In 2002, the Cobbolds handed over the house to their son Henry Lytton Cobbold, who now succeeds to the barony, and his American wife Martha, and moved to a nearby gatehouse.
According to the Telegraph, in 1960 the baron changed his name from Cobbold to Lytton Cobbold, as a mark of respect to his mother’s family. The following year, he married Christine Elizabeth Stucley, one of the last generation of debutantes to be presented to the Queen in 1958. Christine reportedly had a ‘fey, hippyish beauty and other-worldly air’, who, despite this, maintained a ‘down-to-earth country girl’ quality. Cobbold once commented, after being asked how his wife managed the estates at Knebworth, that she was quite able considering her former home was ‘even bigger than mine’.
David Lytton-Cobbold, 2nd Baron Cobbold posing outside the family home Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, England on the 1990.Gary Mitchell, GMP Media / Alamy
Their marriage was a loving and happy one, and despite Cobbald’s ‘eye for a pretty girl’, it was their shared sense of humour and tolerance for one another that kept them close.
Lord Cobbold died aged 84 from Parkinson’s disease earlier this month. According to the Mail Online, yesterday, the baron’s body was driven through Knebworth village accompanied by blasts of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon – his favourite album, the cover design of which was painted on his coffin.
His wife survives him with their three sons, Henry, Richard and Peter, and their daughter, Rosina. Cobbold’s granddaughter, Morwenna Lytton Cobbold, is set to marry her fiancé, Phil Bush, at Knebworth this summer.
