Family Background and Early Life
Lord Moyola was born as James Dawson Clark at Moyola Park, Castledawson, County Londonderry, his family's ancestral home. He was the eldest of three children of James J. Lenox-Conyngham Clark and Marion Caroline Dehra, née Chichester. His brother was Robin Chichester-Clark and his sister, Penelope Hobhouse, the garden writer and historian.
In 1924 James Clark, Snr. changed the family name to Chichester-Clark by deed poll, thus preventing the old ascendancy name Chichester (his wife's maiden name) from dying out. On his mother's side the family are descended from the Donegall Chichesters and were the heirs of the Dawsons of Castledawson, who had originally held Moyola Park.
Educated, against his own wishes, at Selwyn House, Broadstairs, and then Eton, Chichester-Clark left school and entered adulthood in the midst of the Second World War. On joining the Irish Guards, the regiment of his grandfather, in Omagh he began his year-long training before receiving his commission.
He married widow Moyra Haughton (née Morris) in 1959. Lady Moyola's first husband, Capt. Thomas Haughton from Cullybackey (he was part of the linen firm of Frazer & Haughton), had been killed in the Nutts Corner air crash - in which she, whilst pregnant, was seriously injured and suffered a broken neck. Lord and Lady Moyola had two daughters (Tara and Fiona), in addition to Lady Moyola's son, Michael, from her previous marriage.
Read more about this topic: James Chichester-Clark
Famous quotes containing the words family, background, early and/or life:
“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Art is uncompromising and life is full of compromises.”
—Günther Grass (b. 1927)