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Robert Charles Edgcumbe, 8th Earl of Mount Edgcumbe (born 1 June 1939) is a New Zealand-British peer.
Edgcumbe is the son of George Aubrey Valletort Edgcumbe and Meta Lhoyer. He married Joan Ivy Wall, daughter of Ernest Wall in 1960 and went on to have five daughters. They later divorced in 1988. The Earl is now living with Beryl Cottrell, from Millbrook. He succeeded to his titles in 1982 and used to be an estate manager in New Zealand. Members of the Edgcumbe family have lived in New Zealand since the 1860s.
The earl and his immediate predecessor both moved to Cornwall on succeeding to the title. The earl's family live in both New Zealand and Cornwall, where he lives in Empacombe House, Cornwall. The heir to the earldom, his nephew Douglas George Valletort Edgcumbe, lives in New Zealand; Doug is the son of Chris Mortimer Edgcumbe and his wife, Marian Edgcumbe.
Estate
The former home of the Edgcumbe family was Mount Edgcumbe House, Cornwall, overlooking Plymouth Sound, whilst an earlier seat of the family was Cotehele, also in Cornwall. The family owned the estate from 1354, when William de Eggecomb married Hillaria, daughter and heiress of William de Cotehele. In 1872 the Earl of Edgcumbe was the sixth largest landowner in Cornwall with 13,288 acres (5,377 ha).
Mount Edgcumbe house was gutted by incendiary bombs in 1941, but was rebuilt for the sixth earl, and was lived in by the Earls of Mount Edgcumbe until 1987.