Viscount Holmesdale

Viscount Holmesdale


A carte-de-visite portrait of notable Freemason and British politician William Archer Amherst (1836-1910), known was Viscount Holmesdale from 1857 to 1886, when he succeeded and became the 3rd Earl Amherst.

Born in Mayfair on 26 March 1836, he was baptised on 3 May 1836 at St George’s, Hanover Square. He was educated at Eton and went on to serve in the Coldstream Guards, rising to the rank of Captain. During the Crimean War, he was present at the Battle of Balaclava, the siege of Sevastopol and was severely wounded at the Battle of Inkerman.

On his return from the Crimea he became the MP for West Kent in 1859. On 27 August 1862 at Linton in Kent he married Julia Mann, only daughter of the 5th Earl Cornwallis.

In 1868 Holmesdale became MP for Mid-Kent, a seat he held until 1880. On the death of his father in 1886 he became the 3rd Earl Amherst. His first wife Julia died in 1883 and on 25 April 1889 he married Alice Vaughan, the widow of the 5th Earl of Lisburne.

He died on 14 August 1910, aged 74, at his home Montreal Park, near Sevenoaks, in Kent. His death was the result of an operation three months earlier for a throat infection. He was cremated on 16 August 1910 and his ashes were buried two days later at nearby Riverhead. The earl died childless and the titles passed to his brother, Hugh.

Photographed by Maull and Polyblank of London.

 


Code: 125941
© Paul Frecker 2024