Edward, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu has died peacefully at his home on 31 August, aged 88, after a short illness. He is survived by his wife Fiona, his son and heir Ralph, daughter Mary and second son Jonathan. In accordance with his wishes, the estate and visitor attractions are continuing to operate as usual. An estate funeral will be held at Beaulieu, followed by a memorial service at St Margaret’s, Westminster for his friends in London and further afield.
Edward, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, was custodian of his family’s 7000-acre Beaulieu Estate in Hampshire. He was also a champion of the historic vehicle movement and founder of the National Motor Museum. He played a major role in the preservation of England’s historic houses and the development of the UK tourism industry.
Edward Montagu inherited the Beaulieu Estate on the death of his father, John Montagu, a motoring pioneer, when he was just two years old.
When Edward Montagu took over the running of the Beaulieu Estate on his 25th birthday in 1951, he found that he could expect only £1500 a year from his inheritance, a figure that would barely cover running costs. “In 1951, to any sensible, rational being, the house was a white elephant”, he would later say. “The wise solution was to get rid of it. For me, however – neither entirely sensible nor rational – that was unthinkable.”
Various solutions were considered, but eventually he decided to open the house to the paying public (the abbey ruins and grounds had already been open for many years).
Palace House was not as grand as other stately homes, such as Longleat, which had opened its doors a couple of years earlier. What was needed, therefore, was an extra ingredient. Montagu later recounted: “What catapulted me permanently into the major league for the future was the idea of commemorating my father’s life… by exhibiting veteran cars.”
The idea would prove to be a winner. In 1952, there were no other motor museums in the country and it also gave Montagu the opportunity to pay tribute to the father he had never known, who as an MP had been an eager campaigner for the needs of early motorists, and publisher of the first motoring journal Car Illustrated. The only drawback to this plan was that, at the time, he only had one veteran car, a 1903 6hp De Dion Bouton which had previously been used by the estate electrician. A call-out to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders produced the additional exhibits he needed to start a small motor museum in the front hall of Palace House.
By 1956 the vehicle collection, which now included several motorcycles, had outgrown the house and Montagu established a separate home for them in some large sheds in the grounds. The Montagu Motor Museum was born.
By 1959 the vehicle collection had grown even further, and a new building was therefore constructed.
In 1967, the now world-famous Beaulieu Autojumble was held for the first time. The inspiration came from the automobile swap meets Montagu saw in the United States and he was proud that the name he devised, Autojumble, was later given a place in the Oxford English Dictionary.
By the mid-1960s, Beaulieu was attracting over half a million visitors a year.
The plans for the new motor museum and its visitor buildings were then drawn up by the architect Leonard Manasseh. They centred on the design of a new 40,000sq.ft museum with space for at least 200 vehicles. To achieve this, Montagu founded the Beaulieu Museum Trust. As chairman of the charity, his enthusiasm and drive won the support of the motor industry and other sponsors, and within a couple of years the necessary funds to start construction work had been raised.
This ambitious project, which Montagu’s advisers had warned against, came to fruition on 4 July 1972 when The Duke of Kent came to Beaulieu to open what was to become Britain’s National Motor Museum.
It didn’t stop there. In 1989, the National Motor Museum Collections Centre opened to provide an administrative centre for the Trust and to house the ever-expanding motoring libraries and archives. The reference library is one of the largest of its kind and together with the photograph and film libraries is used by commercial and private researchers from all over the world.
In 2012 Lord Montagu received the accolade of a lifetime achievement award for his dedication to preserving automotive history over many decades.