UK Edition
Royals and celebrities attend memorial service to celebrate life of sixth Duke of Westminster
Lady Edwina Snow, the second daughter of the late Duke of Westminster, led the tributes to her father on Monday at a memorial service held in front of some 1,400 mourners, including Prince Charles and other members of the Royal Family, at Chester Cathedral.
In a deeply personal poem titled: ‘A letter to my father’, Lady Edwina – who is married to TV historian Dan Snow – said of her father: “You taught me so much. Fight for what you believe in. Don’t ever give up.
“If you are knocked down, dust yourself off.....and get back on your feet.”
Lady Edwina was joined in paying tribute to the Duke, who died on Aug 9 after suffering a heart attack while visiting his shooting estate in Lancashire, by her brother Hugh, now the 7th Duke of Westminster at just 25 years old.
The new Duke – who until now has enjoyed a relatively private life thanks to his parents’ insistence he be kept out of the limelight – walked a step behind his mother, Lady Natalia Grosvenor, and three sisters, Lady Tamara, Lady Edwina and Lady Viola as they made their way into the cathedral for the service, which was led by the Dean of Chester, the Very Revd Professor Gordon McPhate.
Reading Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’, said to be his father’s favourite, the young Duke – who is one of Prince George's godparents – set a similar tone to his sister with his solemn tribute, his choice of poem serving to paint his father as a man who felt keenly the responsibility on his shoulders, and wanted his son to be prepared for the job that awaited him.
The poem ends: “Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!” A fitting message for a young man who after the Duke’s death in August inherited the enormous responsibility of a £9 billion fortune and thousands of acres of land in the UK and overseas.
The Duke of Cambridge – for whom a ripple of respectful applause went up through the sunlit square when he arrived, accompanied by the Duchess of Cambridge – also gave a reading, performing the Garter Prayer, part of the annual service for Knights of the Order of the Garter, with which the late Duke had been honoured.
Prince William, whose godmother is the Duke’s widow, Lady Natalia, was one of several Royal guests, including the Duchess of Cornwall, Princess Eugenie and the Duke of Kent.
As the Grosvenor family and their guests sang hymns such as Praise My Soul the King of Heaven at the memorial service, the streets of this small cathedral city were lined with people huddling together in the crisp autumn chill hoping to pay their respects to a man who did so much for Chester and its surrounding countryside.
The late Duke is said to have dearly loved spending time at the family's ancestral seat, Eaton Hall, set in 11,000 acres just outside Chester.
He and his wife sent their children to local day schools, and could often be seen in the shops in town, many of which hung portraits of the Duke in their windows.
Margaret Ford, 75, a retired nurse who has lived in the area her whole life, said the people of Chester would miss the Duke, who she said was known to many as being "terribly unassuming".
"He sent his children to local schools, and local kids were always invited to their birthday parties. They were very down to earth people.
"Things changed a little when his son was born. They became more private then, I presume to protect him.
“People do miss him here. He was a great man.”
A country man at heart, who is said to have always wished he had been allowed to become a beef farmer in Northern Ireland like his father, the late Duke struggled at times with the burden of his responsibility, and suffered from bouts of depression.
In an echo of his second daughter’s words at his memorial service yesterday, the Duke once said of his extraordinary life: “It has been an uphill struggle on occasions but life without challenge is no life at all.”