Lord Middleton
A Peer with close links to Applecross, Digby Michael Godfrey John Willoughby, 12th Baron Middleton, died in June 2011 at the age of 90. He, and his sister Hermione had been childhood playmates of Applecross Historical Society’s chairman Alistair McCowan, who said: “His father, Lord Guy, sold Applecross to Captain Arnold Stancomb Wills in 1929. Lord and Lady Middleton were apparently very popular in Applecross with their staff and, for the time, were modern in attitude in that my brother and I, as staff children, were allowed to play with the Middleton children. I can remember, although I was only three or four, being with Michael and Hermione (as we knew) them on the sunken croquet lawn in front of Applecross House.”
Lord Middleton attended Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and lived at Birdsall House, Malton on his family’s ancestral estate. He was commissioned in the Coldstream Guards during World War II, serving in north-west Europe between 1944 and 1945. As well as being mentioned in Despatches, he was awarded the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre.
As the manager of his family’s vast estate, he was very knowledgable about farming and countryside affairs, and he sat in the House of Lords for 28 years. He was descended from Frederick, Prince of Wales, the father of King George III, and was succeeded to the title by his eldest son Michael Charles James Willoughby.
Lord Middleton was a member of the Applecross Historical Society, and we extend sympathies to his family.
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