Nationality British Other names Lindy Guinness | Name Lindy Marchioness Parents Thomas "Loel" Guinness | |
Full Name Serena Belinda Rosemary Guinness Born 25 March 1941 (age 83) ( 1941-03-25 ) Occupation artist, conservationist Spouse(s) Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (m. 1964–88) Grandparents Benjamin Solomon Guinness, Bridget Henrietta Frances Aunts Tanis Eva Bulkeley Guinness, Meraud Michelle Wemyss Guinness Similar People Gloria Guinness, Aga Khan IV, Dolores Guinness | ||
Lindy Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (born 25 March 1941), also known as Lindy Guinness, is a British conservationist and businesswoman. She was married to the fifth Marquess from 1964 until his death in 1988.
Biography
Born Serena Belinda Rosemary Guinness, Lindy is the daughter of financier Loel Guinness and his second wife, Lady Isabel (née Rutland), daughter of John Manners, 9th Duke of Rutland. Her older brother, William Loel, was born in 1939. When Lindy was 9 years old, her parents divorced; her father married Mexican beauty Gloria Rubio in 1951, and her mother married Sir Robert Throckmorton, 11th baronet two years later.
She grew up in Belvoir Castle, the family seat of the Dukes of Rutland. Her father and stepmother took her to Palm Beach for the winters, where she spent time with Rubio's close friend Truman Capote. As a girl, she was a passionate artist and studied painting under Oskar Kokoschka.
She married her fourth cousin Sheridan, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava at Westminster Abbey on 21 October 1964. According to The New York Times, Princess Margaret was among the 2,000 people in attendance, and Arthur Gore, 9th Earl of Arran, then Viscount Sudley, was the best man. Lindy wore a dress by John Cavanagh and the Dufferin and Ava shamrock tiara.
Sheridan was also an art enthusiast and opened a gallery in London. The Dufferins' Holland Park mansion was a popular gathering for London’s "aristo-bohemian set" during the '60s and '70s. "We used to give endless parties," she told W magazine in 2009. "They had this kind of innocence and openness about them. There was no sort of formality." The marquess, who was gay, died of an AIDS-related illness in 1988.
In his will, the marquess bequeathed Clandeboye, the 2,000-acre family estate in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, to his widow. Nervous about moving to Northern Ireland during the Troubles, she became active in conservation issues as a way to bring people together. She invited an environmental group, Conservation Volunteers, to open its first Northern Ireland branch. "I thought this was a way to bring the estate back to its historic position of being the center of the community." The estate includes a large herd of heifers, and in 2009, Dufferin launched Clandeboye Estate Yoghurt, the only yoghurt producer in Northern Ireland.
She also opened an art gallery, the Ava Gallery, and keeps the estate self-sufficient through various other enterprises, including a golf course and banquet hall for weddings.