The family of the 3rd Lord Faringdon
(John Ward, 1978)

In fact, what we see at Buscot today are the combined art collections of the first two Lords Faringdon. To say that their tastes were catholic is perhaps another way of expressing the fact that the accumulation of a collection of pictures was not of studied importance for either owner. Nevertheless, there are some fine works among those acquired by the 1st Lord Faringdon: Rembrandt’s portrait of the grave and introspective man, who may be Pieter Six, is a masterpiece of characterisation and Murillo’s Triumph of the Eucharist is an outstanding Catholic image, while the Burne-Jones Briar Rose series, pervaded by an intense imaginative power, belongs to the highest achievements of English nineteenth-century painting. Sadly, most of Lord Faringdon’s nineteenth-century English paintings, including Watts’s Choosing and Millais’ Esther, were dispersed at auction in July 1934; fortunately, three of the best examples, Watts’s Wife of Pygmalion, Ford Madox Brown’s Entombment, and Leighton’s Daedalus and Icarus, were bought back by his grandson.

The bulk of the pictures to be seen at Buscot today were purchased by the 2nd Lord Faringdon. His enthusiasm for adding to the collection, and his zeal for visiting dealers and auctions, remained with him until the day of his death. These accessions were never quite in the same realms of grandeur as those of the 1st Lord Faringdon – his predilections were more for diverse and minor examples, which had for him an instant appeal. But, together with pictures which pleased him for their element of fantasy, he added to the Italian pictures Palma’s Marriage of St Catherine and Pace’s St Jerome, and to the Flemish collection, the Rubens and Jordaens portraits, all of them worthy of the high seriousness of his grandfather.

In 1948 Ernest Cook bought the Buscot Park estate, leasing the house and garden back to Lord Faringdon. The following year Cook gave the house and the surrounding 55 acres to the National Trust; he bequeathed the remainder of the estate under his will in 1956. Lord Faringdon continued to live there, as well as at Barnsley, an outstanding baroque building some twelve miles distant which his mother had bought as a Dower House when he succeeded to Buscot in 1934. In 1962 he transferred the majority of the important contents of Buscot, with an endowment, to the Trustees of the Faringdon Collection. The heirloom pictures, excluded from this gift, were later handed over by his nephew.
   
The present Lord Faringdon (Charles Michael, 3rd Lord Faringdon) succeeded his uncle in 1977. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge,and did his National Service in the 16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers. In 1959 he married Sarah (Askew); they have three sons and a daughter.

Lord Faringdon joined Cazenove & Co. in 1961 where he was a partner responsible for the firm’s Fund Management until 1996. He became a director of Witan Investment Trust plc in 1976, and was chairman for twenty-three years, retiring in 2003. His current interests include chairmanship of the Institute of Cancer Research and he has served as chairman of the Royal Marsden Hospital, treasurer of the National Art Collections Fund chairman of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (1994–8) and Commissioner of English Heritage (1998–2002). In 1998 he was appointed a personal Lord-in-Waiting to Her Majesty The Queen.

Lord Faringdon has recently given Barnsley to his second son, Thomas, and now lives permanently at Buscot with his wife, who has been responsible for the recent redecoration in the house and much of the new planting in the gardens.