Geoffrey Alexander Rowley-Conwy, 9th Baron Langford

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.^[1]

He married Ruth St John Murphy (died 1991) on 24 January 1939. She was the daughter of Albert St John Murphy and Rose Davis, of The Island House, Little Island, County Cork, Ireland. They divorced in 1956. He married Grete von Freiesleben (11 September 1922 – 16 January 1973) on 7 February 1957. She was the 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 Susan Winifred Denham, daughter of Cyril Henry Charles Denham, of Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales, on 3 February 1975. 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.^[2] He is the patron of the North Wales Wildlife Trust.

See also

• Peter Rowley-Conwy
• List of centenarians (royalty and nobility)

References

Further reading

• Skidmore, Ian. Escape from Singapore, 1942; the story of an incredible voyage through enemy waters, New York: Scribner, 1974. ISBN 978-0-684-13638-7

External links

• Bodrhyddan Hall website
• Lord Langford visits Rhuddlan Nature Reserve
• Bodrhyddan Manuscripts
• The Viking Origins of the Viscounts Conway and Killultagh

Barons of Ireland*
Pre-1801	Kingsale Dunsany Trimlestown Dunboyne Louth Inchiquin Digby Carbery Aylmer Farnham Lisle Macdonald Kensington Newborough Massy Muskerry Stanley of Alderley, Sheffield & Eddisbury Kilmaine Waterpark Graves Huntingfield Rossmore Hotham Crofton ffrench Henley & Northington Clanmorris Langford Henniker & Hartismere Dufferin & Claneboye Dunalley Ventry Ashtown
Post-1801 (precedence mixed with Baronies of the UK)	Rendlesham Castlemaine Decies Garvagh Talbot of Malahide Carew (also UK) Oranmore & Browne & Mereworth Bellew Fermoy Rathdonnell
*Current substantive barons, listed by precedence, from highest to lowest; Italics denotes a barony in the Peerage of the United Kingdom