Cecil Fane De Salis

Sir Cecil Fane de Salis, KCB, (Fringford, 31.5.1857, Wargrave 9.3.1948),^[1] of Dawley Court, Hillingdon, Uxbridge, Middlesex,^[2] was chairman of Middlesex County Council 1919–1924, and landowner in the parish of Harlington.^[3][4]

Postcard of Cecil Fane de Salis, and his wife and 13 children, 1912.

Dawley Court, Goulds Green, on the border of Harlington and Hillingdon, Middlesex, c. 1890.

Photograph of Dawley Court in 1893.

A nephew of William Fane de Salis and second of the four sons of Rev. Henry Jerome Fane De Salis of Portnall Park (the seventh son of Jerome, 4th Count de Salis-Soglio) he was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford.^[5] He became a barrister (Inner Temple, called 1881). Later he was Middlesex's County Alderman; a long-standing member of Middlesex County Council; chairman and owner of market gardeners H. & A. Pullen Burry, Ltd. of Sompting, West Sussex; he was a director of the Dawley Wall Gravel Pit in the parish of Harlington; JP (Middlesex, 1896–1938), chairman of the bench 1921–1931;^[6] Deputy Lieutenant (Middlesex, from 1918); High Sheriff (Middlesex, 1905).^[7] In 1931 he became a companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) and was made a knight (KCB) of the same order in 1935.^[8]

During WWI he sat for 449 days (from 25 February 1916) as one of the 10 members of the Appeal Tribunal for the County of Middlesex, which he described: This was sad work and many hard cases had to be dealt with, and often decided against the appellant.^[9] He was vice-chairman (1912–1925) and then chairman (1925–1936) of the Middlesex Territorial and Auxiliary Force Association.^[10][11] Through Middlesex County Council he was closely associated with the mental hospitals at Harperbury and Shenley. He was also a governor of Uxbridge County School, aka the Bishopshalt School, now in Hillingdon.^[12]

Fane De Salis was for many years chairman of the Harlington, Harmondsworth and Cranford Cottage Hospital.

He was a member of the Union Club (site now home to Canada House, Trafalgar Square).

Photograph of George, Peter, Jerome, Edmund and Harry, at Dawley Court, the elder sons of Cecil Fane De Salis in 1900.

Fourteen children

Harry, Cecil's eldest son, in 1898.

Cecil & Rachel De Salis and their grandson Jerome, 1929.

He married, 3 September 1889, Rachel Elizabeth Frances Waller, (*Farmington, Gloucestershire 1.1.1868, † Thornbury, Bristol, 6.1.1954), only child and heir of Edmund Waller VI or VII,^[13] and had 14 children, living firstly, 1889–1896, with his father at Portnall Park and then at Dawley Court.^[14]

• Henry Edmund Challoner (Harry), *Portnall 17.7.1891, † Oxford 20.9.1913;
• Adela Lucy, *Portnall 9.10.1893, † Portnall 9.1.1894;
• Edmund William, * Portnall 31.12.1894, † Hampstead Marshall 21.1.1980;
• Jerome Joseph, *Portnall 3.1.1896, † Lincoln 3.10.1915;
• John Peter, * Dawley 15.4.1897, † Thornbury 21.10.1973;
• George Rodolph, *Dawley 1.6.1898, † France 21.6.1917;
• Barbara Grace Victoria, * Dawley 20.1.1900, † Johannesburg 11.1990;
• Rev. Andrew Augustine, *Dawley 17.1.1901, † ... 3.2.1962;
• Grace Dorothea, * Dawley 28.2.1902, † Earsham, Norfolk 26.2.1977;
• Stephen Hercules, * Dawley 1.4.1903, † Hollycross, Crazies Hill 18.9.1934,
• Judith Anna, * Dawley 10.6.1904, † Ditchingham, Norfolk 10.2.1983;
• Cecil Ulysses Octavius Fane, * Dawley 26.10.1906, † Worthing 29.3.1977;
• Rachel Penelope, * Dawley 14.4.1908, † Cheltenham 14.12.1996;
• Arthur Regester, *Dawley 18.11.1911, † Droitwich 24.3.2001.^[15]

Land in Northern Ireland

The Belfast Gazette of March 11, 1927,^[16] records Cecil as having 18 parcels of land in county Armagh. These were at Dromart, Tandragee; Ballyworkan, Portadown; Tamnaghvelton; Tamnaghmore; and Brackagh, Portadown. These came to circa 140 acres and were valued at and compulsorily sold to the tenants for circa £2,000 in 1927.^[17]

References

1. Buried Harlington, Middlesex.
2. Dawley Court he inherited from his uncle William Fane De Salis in 1896 (he sold it in 1929); in old age he lived at Holly Cross House, Crazies Hill, Wargrave, Berks. (sold 1949).
3. NOTES OF PAST DAYS, By Cecil and Rachel De Salis, Henley-on-Thames, 1939. (Printed by Higgs & Co., Caxton Works).
4. A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 3, Shepperton, Staines, Stanwell, Sunbury, Teddington, Heston and Isleworth, Twickenham, Cowley, Cranford, West Drayton, Greenford, Hanwell, Harefield and Harlington, Victoria County History (VCH), London, 1962, pages 261-267.
5. His brothers were Charles, Bishop of Taunton, Rodolph Fane De Salis and Admiral Sir William Fane De Salis.
6. Eileen Bowlt, Justice in Middlesex, Waterside Press, Hook, UK, 2007.
7. By virtue of his having been Sheriff in 1905 a full heraldic achievement (as for a count de Salis) in stained glass was put up in his honour in the Middlesex Guildhall, formerly Old Court no. 1, now the Supreme Court's library.
8. Burke's Landed Gentry, edited by Peter Townend, eighteenth edition, volume one, London, Burke's Peerage, 1965, (pages 251-253).
9. NOTES OF PAST DAYS, By Cecil and Rachel De Salis, Henley-on-Thames, 1939. (Printed by Higgs & Co., Caxton Works).
10. Presumedly part of the 44th (Home Counties) Division?
11. Three of his four sons who fought in the WW1 were in the one of the territorial battalions of the Middlesex Regiment
12. He sent all of his elder sons to the school.
13. Edmund Waller, of Kirkby Fleetham, (inherited as a result of descent from John Aislabie of Studley Royal, Ripon, North Yorkshire and Farmington Lodge, Northleach, Gloucestershire, by Lucy Elwes daughter of Henry Elwes of Colesbourne, Gloucs. Lucy Elwes’ great-grandfather was John Elwes the miser.
14. De Salis Family : English Branch, by Rachel Fane De Salis, Henley-on-Thames, 1934.
15. Burke's Landed Gentry, edited by Peter Townend, eighteenth edition, volume one, London, Burke's Peerage, 1965, (pages 251-253).
16. The Belfast Gazette of March 11, 1927, page 233: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/Belfast/issue/298/page/233/data.pdf
17. Land Purchase Commission, Northern Ireland land Act 1925, The Belfast Gazette of March 11, 1927, page 233.