Name Geoffrey Rowley-Conwy, | Parents Bertha Gabrielle Cochran | |
Full Name () 8 March 1912 (age 103) Spouse(s) Ruth St John Murphy (1939-1956, div.)
Grete von Freiesleben (1957-1973, her death)
Susan Winifred Denham (1975-present) Education Marlborough College, Royal Military Academy, Woolwich | ||
Colonel Geoffrey Alexander Rowley-Conwy, 9th Baron Langford, OBE, DL (born 8 March 1912) is a British-Irish peer and British Army officer.
Biography
The only son of two children born to Major Geoffrey Seymour Rowley-Conwy (1877 – 10 August 1915), who was killed in action Gallipoli, and Bertha Gabrielle Cochran, JP (1880–1984), Langford was educated at Marlborough College and Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He served as an army officer with the Royal Artillery in World War II, being captured at the Japanese taking of Singapore in 1942, but escaping, before seeing further active service in Burma. He reached the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1945 and retired from the regular army in 1957. He was appointed an Honorary Colonel in 1967.
He married on 24 January 1939 (divorced 1956) Ruth St John Murphy (died 1991), daughter of Albert St John Murphy and Rose Davis, of The Island House, Little Island, County Cork, Ireland. He married on 7 February 1957 Grete von Freiesleben (11 September 1922 - 16 January 1973), daughter of Colonel Erik Theodor Christian von Freiesleben, of Hjortekaer, Kongens Lyngby, Copenhagen, Ch Kings's Adj's Staff to His Majesty The King of Denmark. He married on 3 February 1975 Susan Winifred Denham, daughter of Cyril Henry Charles Denham, of Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales. Lady Langford is a patron of St Kentigern Hospice, St Asaph. Langford has three sons by his second marriage and a son and a daughter by his third. His heir is his third son from his second marriage, Hon Owain Grenville Rowley-Conwy (born 1958).
He inherited the Bodrhyddan estate in Rhuddlan, on the death of his unmarried and childless paternal uncle Captain Rafe Grenville Rowley-Conwy RN CMG in April 1951 and succeeded to the Barony as the ninth holder of the title on the death of his childless second cousin once removed Arthur Sholto Langford Rowley, 8th Baron Langford CMG in August 1953. He is Constable of Rhuddlan Castle and Lord of the Manor of Rhuddlan. He turned 100 in March 2012. He is the patron of the North Wales Wildlife Trust.