Francis Leigh, 3rd Baron Leigh (1855-1938)
Lt.-Col. Francis Dudley Leigh, 3rd Baron Leigh, of Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire
He grew up at his family's ancestral home, Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire. He was Assistant-Secretary to the Secretary of State to India when he met and fell in love with his first wife, Helene Beckwith, daughter of the American Minister to France. She was eight years his senior and at 43 was considered past childbearing age which made her a surprising choice for a peer. They were married in 1890 at St. George's, Hanover Square, London. When he succeeded to Stoneleigh Abbey in 1905, the estate was encumbered with a debt of £92,000, presumably cleared by his wife. Helene added some American luxury to Stoneleigh when she converted a large closet into a bathroom but electricity wasn't added until 1911, two years after her death when her husband inherited her fortune of £231,642. In 1923, he married another American, Marie Campbell, this time 37-years his junior. By the late 1920s the estate was in trouble again he fired his agent replacing him with his wife After he died in 1938, Marie was widely credited with conserving the estate ‘in spite of huge taxation.’ She spent her widowhood at their townhouse in London, 31 Grosvenor Square. Leigh died without children by either wife.
