James Chichester-Clark - Family Background and Early Life

Family Background and Early Life

Lord Moyola was born as James Dawson Clark at Moyola Park, Castledawson, County Londonderry, his family's ancestral home. He was the eldest of three children of James J. Lenox-Conyngham Clark and Marion Caroline Dehra, née Chichester. His brother was Robin Chichester-Clark and his sister, Penelope Hobhouse, the garden writer and historian.

In 1924 James Clark, Snr. changed the family name to Chichester-Clark by deed poll, thus preventing the old ascendancy name Chichester (his wife's maiden name) from dying out. On his mother's side the family are descended from the Donegall Chichesters and were the heirs of the Dawsons of Castledawson, who had originally held Moyola Park.

Educated, against his own wishes, at Selwyn House, Broadstairs, and then Eton, Chichester-Clark left school and entered adulthood in the midst of the Second World War. On joining the Irish Guards, the regiment of his grandfather, in Omagh he began his year-long training before receiving his commission.

He married widow Moyra Haughton (née Morris) in 1959. Lady Moyola's first husband, Capt. Thomas Haughton from Cullybackey (he was part of the linen firm of Frazer & Haughton), had been killed in the Nutts Corner air crash - in which she, whilst pregnant, was seriously injured and suffered a broken neck. Lord and Lady Moyola had two daughters (Tara and Fiona), in addition to Lady Moyola's son, Michael, from her previous marriage.

Read more about this topic:  James Chichester-Clark

Famous quotes containing the words family, background, early and/or life:

    Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units.
    Valerie Solanas (b. 1940)

    ... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.
    Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

    We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    Death or life or life or death
    Death is life and life is death
    I gotta use words when I talk to you
    But if you understand or if you dont
    That’s nothing to me and nothing to you
    We all gotta do what we gotta do
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)