With pleasure Tampabay! Unfortunately I am away from home for a couple of days so can only give you a little bit off the top of my head at present...but it may prove of interest nonetheless! I shall start with Gerald and Natalia Westminster!
When Gerald Grosvenor was born in 1951, his 1st cousin once removed, the 2nd Duke was still alive. In fact there were three adult males in more direct line of succession to the Dukedom at the time. Cousin Bend'Or as the 2nd Duke was known, lived in unimaginable splendour dividing his time between Eaton Hall, the sprawling neo gothic ducal seat in Cheshire, the Reay Forest estate in Sutherland, a chateau in France where he kept a pack of hounds with which to hunt wild boar, a palatial home in London, a private steam train and railway connecting Eaton to the mainline railway network and a beautifully appointed yacht. At the time of Gerald's birth, cousin Bend'Or was already busy arranging a water tight policy by which he and a succession of lawyers managed to tie up the majority of the valuable Grosvenor patrimony in some twenty trusts. When Bend'Or died a portion of the acreage was sold to meet duties on a portion of the 2nd Duke's personal estate, but it hardly dented the family fortunes. This was at a time when the notorious Bend'Or and the Grosvenor estates Group were in receipt of an income in excess of 10,000 pounds a day! Little Gerald Grosvenor would one day inherit not only the Dukedom of Westminster but the only income generating shares in the trusts established by the 2nd Duke. One day Gerald would become the richest man in Britain, a position he held on and off for over twenty years, before a football mad Russian oligarch supplanted him and then a steel tycoon from India relegated Westminster to third place in the UK rich list.
After Bend'Or 2nd Duke died in 1953 he was succeeded by his 'mad' cousin, William, 3rd Duke (1894 - 1963) who lived in seclusion in a house tucked away out of sight with a small staff of retainers. He occupied part of his time breeding ducks, whilst trustees administered the Grosvenor estates and no doubt looked on with wry amusement as the Inland Revenue established a new department specifically to try and establish just how monolithic and hopefully death duty taxable the Grosvenor patrimony was! In the end Bend'Or had done an admirable job in protecting the estates. When the mad 3rd Duke died the Dukedom passed to his first cousin, Gerald 4th Duke (1907 - 1967) a veteran soldier who never fully recovered his health after seeing action during World War II. A respected soldier and man of ability Gerald was appointed Lord Steward in 1964 and died in office in 1967. He was succeeded by his brother Robert, 5th Duke (1910 - 1979). This Duke and his wife Viola had three children, Lady Leonora who married the Queen Mother's great nephew, the impossibly glamorous Patrick Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield, Gerald who succeeded his father as 6th Duke and Lady Jane Dawnay, who married as his first wife, Guy Innes Kerr, 10th Duke of Roxburghe.
Robert future 5th Duke of Westminster made Ulster his home after the war. He and his brother had close familial ties to the province as their mother, Lady Mabel Grosvenor was a daughter of the 4th Earl of Erne, who owned a large estate at Crom Castle in Co Fermanagh. More interesting still, was the fact that the the Grosvenors and Ernes were linked by the marriage of Mabel's brother, Henry, Viscount Crichton to Hugh Lupus, 1st Duke of Westminster's daughter, Lady Mary Grosvenor, aunt to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Dukes of Westminster. Henry and Mary had a daughter, Lady Kathleen Crichton who married the James Hamilton, 4th Duke of Abercorn. Thus the present Dukes of Westminster and Abercorn are second cousins and were close neighbours when Gerald was a boy.
In fact Gerald Grosvenor had little idea of just what a huge inheritance awaited him until the his uncle Gerald, 4th Duke died in 1967. Until then, Gerald's parents lived at Ely Lodge in Fermanagh, where Colonel Lord Robert Grosvenor had worked as a gentleman farmer. Only with his father's accession to the Dukedom did the sixteen year old Gerald become fully aware of the extent of what awaited him. He had wanted to be a professional footballer and this was apparently only quashed at his father's behest. Instead he was expected to be groomed to take over the family estates. At the time trustees, were running the vast portfolio of properties and it was anticipated that young Gerald would follow his father's example and allow the trustees to continue to act for him and the family when he succeeded and that he would run the agricultural side of things
In fact Gerald's academic track record was hardly reassuring. He failed to get into Sandhurst and instead joined the Territorial Army. He thrived and eventually did get into Sandhurst and embarked on a military career proper. His involvement in the TA has been long standing.The neo gothic Eaton Hall of the 1st Duke's day had been more or less entirely demolished and in 1970 the 5th Duke commissioned his brother in law to design a new ducal seat. The resulting modernist house was IMHO absolutely vile, and one commenator said it looked like the 'largest service station' in Cheshire.....believe me it did!!! Internally it was actually rather nice, but nothing could detract from the horror of that stark, white concrete exterior! Thankfully in the 1990s the house underwent a major program of alteration and now looks rather more pleasing in its present guise!
Anyway, in 1966 Gerald's cousin, James Marquess of Hamilton married Alexandra Phillips and in time, Gerald came to know 'Sacha's' sister Natalia. In 1978 the nineteen year old Natalia married Gerald and in the following year, with the death of her father in law, she became Duchess of Westminster. Interesting the Phillips girls were not only linked to the Royal Families of Europe through their maternal great grand father, Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia but also via Janet Bryce,wife of the 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven, to the Mountbattens. Janet was a first cousin of Alexandra and Natalia's father!
The Westminsters and the Abercorns remained close neighbours in Northern Ireland until the 1980s when Gerald sold the Ely Lodge estate. Now the Westminster family divides its time between Eaton Hall in Cheshire, Abbeystead House in Lanacshire, the Reay Forest estate in Scotland and the La Garganta estate in Spain, which the Duke has been leasing from a member of the Wittelsbach family.
Gerald and his brother in law James Abercorn are both Knights of the Garter, and the latter is Lord Steward.
I shall add more when I get home if you would like?
Stuff such as the Lady Tamara Grosvenor- Edward Van Cutsem marriage which purportedly instigated the Prince of Wales to get on with plans to marry Camilla. etc.....may be of interest! Then there is Hugh Van Cutsem's marriage into the British branch of the Astor dynasty!
I do find it interesting how the Grosvenor fortunes have remained pretty huge and intact when compared to those of the American Astors! I guess entailed patrimony may have played a major factor in this though, as the Astor fortunes was repeatedly weakened by generational division in a way similar to that of the Vanderbilt millions.
