Welsh Journals

OBITUARIES THE SEVENTH EARL OF POWIS PRESIDENT OF THE POWYSLAND CLUB George William Herbert, the seventh Earl of Powis and the fifth President of the Powysland Club, died from cancer in Shrewsbury Hospital on 13 August 1993 aged 68 years. He was the son of Percy Mark Herbert, suffragan bishop of Kingston-upon-Thames. He spent his childhood in Lancashire after his father was made the first bishop of Blackburn in 1926. The family moved to Norwich when he was seventeen after Bishop Herbert was made bishop of Norwich in 1942. George Herbert was educated at Eton and, it being wartime, he went straight into the Army on leaving school. He readily admitted he was not a military man (although in his maturer years he looked every inch the military man) and people often accorded him military rank, much to his amusement. Following the war he served overseas in Holland and Norway where he learnt to drive in a three-ton army truck. Leaving the Army in 1947 he went up to Cambridge and read history. He then took up his chosen career of land agent and worked as a resident land agent on estates in Norfolk, Bedford and lastly Suffolk for the twenty years from 1950 to 1970. He was a fellow of the Land Agents' Society and an associate of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. In 1970 he retired as a land agent and moved to Marrington Hall, Chirbury, to take responsibility for the family agricultural estates, where he remained until his death. Shortly after coming to Marrington, George, for that is how he preferred to be addressed, became a member of the Powysland Club. He was keenly interested in local history and genealogy. His researches into the Herbert family were rigorous, tracing every person with the surname of Herbert from the mid 15th century through to the end of the 18th century. His files give details on all that is known on well over 1,500 people. An indication of the meticulous and thorough approach to this work is evident from a paper entitled 'Who was John Herbert the sheriff, which was published in Volume 68 of the Montgomeryshire Collections. In 1982 he became the Honorary Treasurer of the Club, in which office he served until 1988 when he succeeded his second cousin as the Earl of Powis and immediately became, as all previous Earls of Powis had done, the President of the Powysland Club. Mr Eric Gent succeeded his lordship as Hon. Treasurer and had this to say to the Club's A.G.M. in 1989: 'For a number of years the Club has benefited from the good housekeeping of its treasurer, now the seventh Earl of Powis. He has built up meticulous records and freely given time to the Club's affairs. His successor as Treasurer would wish to place on record the fact that he has inherited a system and records which made the taking over a light task and emphasised the debt owed by the Club to Lord Powis'. Lord Powis was very much a family man but who never forgot the importance of the balance between family and his other commitments. His sense of family responsibility and care was extended to the way he ran his estates and his relationship with the village and community. He was an enthusiastic bell ringer and an equally keen snooker player, playing with the local league. Right up to the last weeks of his illness with cancer he was actively raising money for the restoration appeals for