Lady Agatha Prothero-Fane

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Lady Agatha Prothero-Fane OBE JP, b. 3 April 1937, is the daughter and only surviving child of VAdm the Earl of Builth and Matapan. A distant cousin to the Duke of Taunton, the Hon. Lady Trulock, the Marquess of Badenoch, the Earl of Maynooth, the Dowager Countess of Freuchie, the Earl of Freuchie, the Baron and Baroness Ardagh, the Master of Dilton and his siblings, the Baron Mallerstang, very distantly the Duchess of Taunton, and, in short, half the peerage, she is universally known as ‘Cousin’, or in some cases ‘Aunt’, Agatha.

A spinster, she has devoted her life to farming, the Royal Welsh Show, Welsh male voice choirs, and good works: not least giving good advice, often unasked, to her very extended family.

Life
Lady Agatha was born, as the Hon, Agatha Prothero-Fane, to the then Cmdr David Hywel Rhydderch Prothero-Fane RN, 20th Baron Llanafan, and his wife Betrys Anwen, daughter (and heiress) of the industrialist and quarry- and mine-owner Sir Evan Wynne-Vaughan-Wynne JP. Sir Evan had opposed the match, regarding Llanafan’s refusal to use his title professionally (not least because nine in ten of the wardroom, let alone the ratings, could not pronounce it) as suspiciously Radical, indeed, Socialist-minded; Lady Wynne-Vaughan-Wynne, who was a ‘wallpaper-Socialist’ in a Romantic, William Morris sort of way (she had been born a Herbert), supported the match and, as always, got her way.

Joan, Lady Wynne-Vaughan-Wynne, was, unsurprisingly, also a back-to-the-land advocate, a suffragist, and a looming figure in the undispersed mists of the Celtic Revival. She was a great influence in Agatha Prothero-Fane’s early life.

Lady Agatha’s grandfather Sir Evan, for all his faults, was a staunch anti-appeaser, and worked himself up into a stroke over Munich; in consequence, when war came, the young Agatha was raised by her mother and her two grandmothers, Lady Wynne-Vaughan-Wynne and Eluned, the Dowager Lady Llanafan. The latter’s interests were in music, sheep, and the Church, and Agatha was to take after both her grandmothers – and her mother, who, though a staunch Conservative and churchwoman, was an early and consistent supporter of Welsh devolution.

Her father’s war service was extensive and successful; and an ongoing frustration to the Admiralty and others. As a protégé of Churchill’s and of Sir Roger Keyes’, he was commonly the winner in any quarrels, most of which were the result of too much drive and initiative and a desperate determination to be at sea and not in shore appointments. (Sir Ronnie McCammond of McCammond, grandfather of the present McCammond of that Ilk, succeeded him in command of HMS Loch Etive (K635), and afterward served under his command in the Mediterranean, Prothero-Fane being Commodore with his pennant aboard HMS Admetus (D232) and The McCammond commanding HMS Somerled (D713). It was in one of these two commissions that The McCammond gave Prothero-Fane the indelible nickname, treasured at the Admiralty ever after, of ‘Pro-Fane’.)

It was also at this time that her uncle Owain Prothero-Fane was consecrated Bishop of Llangollen in the Church in Wales, much to his and his elder brother’s amusement: they rejoiced to greet one another in mock solemnity as, ‘My Lord’ and ‘My Lord’. (Bishop Prothero-Fane was better loved by his Chapter than was his brother by the Admiralty, but no less difficult at times: he acquired a bye-name of his own, the canons ringing changes upon Vergil’s tag, Procul, O procul este profani.) In consequence of this elevation, however, Uncle Owain was much less frequently at Plas Buallt, and the household of Agatha’s infancy became almost wholly one of women: even in the Servants’ Hall, with most of the men away at war. Only the old and the very young – such as her brothers Rhydderch, born 1938, and the twins Owain and Evan, born 1940 – remained.

By the time Agatha saw her father next, he had been made, firstly, a viscount (of Cilmery) and, after, Earl of Builth and Matapan, and had attained flag rank; and her own style had changed, from ‘the Hon.’ to ‘Lady’.

Education
Lady Agatha should, it is likely, have gone to a girls’ public school as a boarder in any case; her father’s career, and her mother’s determination to support him with her presence in overseas peacetime appointments, made this certain. She was packed off to Cheltenham Ladies’ in due course, just avoiding the worst of the post-war dislocations which the end of the war had not ameliorated.

Encouraged by her mother and her Dowager Gran (Lady Wynne-Vaughan-Wynne had died when Lady Agatha was in her sixteenth year, in Coronation year), Agatha went on to study at the then Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, partly in deference to the farming enthusiasms of both her grandmothers.

Career
Her deb year was one of the last before the discontinuation of Court presentations by the new Queen, and, if her purpose was to find a husband, she failed in that purpose. Whether that were  her purpose is an open question. The comings-out into Society by débutantes were then the prerequisite for participating in the Season: which included things dear to her heart, such as the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Badminton Horse Trials, the Grand National, and of course the Shows: the Royal Welsh Show not least.

 It is attested on good authority that, as a deb, she found it impossible to consider any of the young men she danced with as measuring up to her standards (standards largely based upon her father and her episcopal uncle), with one exception: a handsome young Army officer a few years her senior. Her mother was a trifle concerned by his lack of current funds (her father rather pointedly asked the Countess, Had she or the late Sir Evan thought him  a fortune-hunter in his  day); her father simply asked if she truly wished to marry a pongo, and, Surely there were eligible young Naval  officers?

Lady Agatha, by contrast, was more troubled by his future prospects, or, rather, the chance of their turning up trumps: she told him that there was too great a possibility of his acceding to a title in abeyance and several titles which were dependant on the underlying succession; and she was damned if she’d risk becoming Duchess of Taunton.

Her brothers being yet at school (Cilmery only just), and her father being away OHMS (Naval), she returned to manage – for which, read, ‘whip into shape’ – Plas Buallt. This being the period – interrupted by the Korean War and Suez – in which her father was becoming known as ‘the placeholder’, throwing over shore commands to get to sea and so getting increasingly only stop-gap short commands, she left Plas Buallt hardly ever after, going abroad only once, when her father was for a month in 1956 Temporary Commander-in-Chief America and West Indies Station on the eve of its disestablishment. (She always regretted that she had not been old enough to visit him in his China Station days, he having been CiC, Acting, China Station (East Indies Fleet), June 1949, and the Far East Fleet’s Flag Officer 2iC (FO2FEF), Acting, November 1951 (as RAdm); she inherited from him, all the same, an interest in Chinoiserie.)

Her brothers following in their fathers’ Naval wake, she became entrenched at Plas Buallt. Sisters-in-law came and went. (Her brother Cilmery married in 1966, had two sons, succeeded to the earldom, and was facing a petition for divorce when he died of a heart attack whilst on patrol in command of HMS Neath (D13). Owain and Evan had each of them their own marital problems: Owain’s wife was unfaithful to the point of divorce, and Evan’s was an apparent suicide, although everyone agreed to pretend it was an accident: both had expressed their frustration with being married to a double-act set of twins both of whom, but for sex and the breeding of heirs, seemed to have no time for anyone save his twin, as is not unprecedented.) Her nephew Dafydd, raised by Aunt Agatha and Dafydd’s mother, and the son and successor of Rhydderch Earl of Builth whom he succeeded aged ten years, served in the Gulf aboard the ill-starred HMS Swindon (D111), served as the RN assigned officer aboard USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81), and was in command of HMS Taunton (F13) in the Iraq, or Second Gulf, War; his Naval career since, even in shore appointments, has left Lady Agatha the undisputed and undisturbed mistress and chatelaine of Plas Buallt. The late Dowager Countess, who had been upon the verge of escaping that title when Rhydderch had died before she could divorce him, and who found herself immured at Plas Buallt as a new widow and countess dowager with three infant sons to raise, had stopped on only until the twins were safely launched at BRNC Dartmouth, and then shaken the dust from off her feet and bolted to London, where she met and married as his third wife the Earl of Tuxford. With neither sister-in-law, nephew, or niece by marriage to take on the task, Lady Agatha became the Chief Vestal, the Virgo Maxima, of Plas Buallt and its estate.

<p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">As such, she has rationalised and modernised its operations; restored its fabric; and put it squarely in the black. She also acquired adjoining lands which had been intended for development, and farmed them personally, and has been very successful at Sioe Frenhinol Cymru, the Royal Welsh Show: it remains her ambition at last to win the Champion Welsh Cob Senior Stallion, Champion Welsh Black Bull, Champion Pedigree Welsh Pig Boar, and Champion Black Welsh Mountain Sheep Ram classes all in one year.

<p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">Lady Agatha has been for many years a churchwarden; patroness of every worthy local initiative; a magistrate; and, by co-option, a local councillor whenever a local vacancy arises. (Like her late father, she is willing to accept temporary appointments of the tiresome sort, but is for the period of the appointment visibly straining at anchor to return to what she likes doing.)

<p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">She is a member, fellow, sponsor, or patron of, inter alia, the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (Anrhydeddus Gymdeithas y Cymmrodorion); the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society, for which she served as Lady Ambassador when Brecknockshire was the Featured County; the Welsh Ploughing Association; the Builth & District Ploughing & Hedging Society; the Royal Bath and West of England Society; the Royal Cornwall Agricultural Association; the Anglesey Agricultural Society; the Cheshire Agricultural Society; the Burwarton and District-wide Agricultural Society; the Kenilworth and District Agricultural Society; the Shropshire & West Midland Agricultural Society; the Newport and District Agricultural Society [Salop]; the Three Counties Agricultural Society; the Tenbury Agricultural Society; the National Honey Show; the Beefarmers’ Association; the Welsh Beekeepers Association; the British Beekeepers Association; the Rare Breeds Survival Trust; the Welsh Pony and Cob Society, Cymdeithas y Merlod a’r Cobiau Cymreig; the Welsh Black Cattle Society; the Black Welsh Mountain Sheep Breeders’ Association; the Pedigree Welsh Pig Society; and the Royal Agricultural Society of England.

<p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal">She was made OBE for services to agricultural improvement in the Birthday Honours of 2006.

Ancestry
<p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal;">The Prothero-Fanes are descended of the ruler Rhydderch ap Iestyn through his son the ruler Gruffydd ap Rhydderch and of Ivon Vane, captain at Poitiers and progenitor of the Earls of Westmorland and the Earls of Darlington; through her paternal and maternal grandparents, Lady Agatha is descended also of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn king of Gwynedd and Powys and the House of Mathrafal; of Rhodri Mawr and the House of Dinefwr; of King Hywel ap Cadell Dda; of Owain ap Gruffudd Mawr the King of All Wales; of Sir William ap Thomas, the Blue Knight of Gwent, founder of the Herbert dynasty including the Earls of Pembroke; the princes of Powys Fadog; and Edwin of Mercia. 

Titles and styles

 * <p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal;">The Hon. Agatha Prothero-Fane, 1937 – 1946
 * <p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal;">Lady Agatha Prothero-Fane, 1946 – 1968
 * <p class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;font-weight:normal;">Lady Agatha Prothero-Fane JP, 1968 – 2006
 * <p align="LEFT" class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom:0in;border-width:initial;border-style:none;padding:0in;font-weight:normal;">Lady Agatha Prothero-Fane OBE JP, 2006 –