Philip Stanhope, 1st Baron Weardale

Philip James Stanhope, 1st Baron Weardale (8 December 1847 - 1 March 1923) was a British politician and philanthropist.

Born in Marylebone, he came from an important political family: a son of Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope and younger brother of Arthur Philip Stanhope, 6th Earl Stanhope (1838–1905) and the Conservative Party politician Edward Stanhope (1840-1893), he became a Liberal like his cousin Lord Rosebery.

Having joined the Royal Navy as a young man, he rose to the rank of lieutenant before he left the service. In 1877, he married Countess Alexandra Tolstoy (1856-1934), daughter of the Russian Count Von Cancrin and widow of Count Tolstoy, a relative of the writer Leo Tolstoy.

In 1886, he was elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal Member of Parliament for Wednesbury. Having lost his seat in 1892, he was elected again in 1893 and sat for Burnley until 1903. Defeated again, he was elected in 1904 for Harborough. In 1906, he was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Weardale, of Stanhope.

A prominent opponent of war - including the Boer War - he was president of the sixth National Peace Conference in Leicester in 1910, led the British group in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and became president of that organisation from 1912 to 1922. He was also president of the Save the Children Fund and a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery.

With Lord Curzon, he became in 1912 joint president of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, an anti-suffrage organisation; in 1914, he was attacked with a dogwhip at Euston Station by a suffragette who mistook him for the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith.

In 1906, he built Weardale Manor, a house on Toys Hill, Brasted Chart, near Sevenoaks in Kent. A substantial house - 145 rooms - it was only occupied during the summer months. After his death, Lady Weardale rarely visited. On her death in 1934, she left it to her nephew, Lord Stanhope. Lacking the funds to maintain it, he allowed it to fall into disrepair and it was demolished in 1939.

The Weardales had no children and the title became extinct on Lord Weardale's death in Sevenoaks aged 75. He is buried at Chevening.

Further reading

*Private papers of Lord and Lady Weardale are held at the Centre for Kentish Studies of the [http://www.kentarchives.org/ Kent Archives Service] .
*There are some papers of Lord Weardale in the [http://www.savethechildren.org.uk Save the Children] archives.

References

*Rayment