Today marks the 10th Anniversary of the Death of Nancy, Lady Bagot, who passed away on this day in 2014! The Australian Beauty who met her English Aristocrat aboard a ship a few years before he became Baron Baron, and later bought the centuries-old Family Seat, Lady Bagot was a fascinating figure and today, we are featuring her Diamond Tiara!
This spectacular Diamond Tiara was worn by Lady Bagot on a handful of occasions in the 1950s, but was never her personal property, instead being loaned from Lord Bagot’s cousin, Lady Brooke, who was married to Rear-Admiral Sir Basil Vernon Brooke, the Treasurer of Queen Mother and a Groom in Waiting from 1937 to 1945.
One of the earliest appearances of Lady Bagot wearing this striking antique Diamond Tiara came in March 1953, soon after it was announced Lord and Lady Bagot were unable to obtain seats at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey.
Lady Bagot, who was Miss Nancy Spicer, of N.S.W., before her marriage in 1940, has Coronation robes but no Abbey seat. She borrowed the robes from her cousin, Lilian Lady Bagot, widow of the fourth baron, long before the Earl Marshal’s ballot for Abbey scats, and she had the robes altered to fit. I After all that her 76-ycar old husband was unlucky in the draw. He merely gets two seats in an official stand out- side the Abbey. He was sad about the ballot result, too, because his inherited robes fitted him perfectly, says the diarist. But Lady Bagot remains optimistic. She said to-day the robes were not going back to storage yet because their names were on the Earl Marshal’s list in case any peers are un- able to go to the Abbey at the last minute.
A few months later, Lady Bagot was wearing the Diamond Tiara with her Emerald Earrings, Pearl Necklaces, and Choker in May 1953, likely for the Coronation Ball at the Royal Albert Hall.
However, Lord and Lady Bagot did attend the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, where Lady Bagot was wearing the Diamond Tiara with her Emerald Earrings, Pearl Necklaces, and Choker.
Lord Bagot, who is the sixth baron, and Lady Bagot were unlucky earlier in the peers’ ballot for the Abbey, but have since been on the waiting list and got their seats when another peer withdrew through illness. Lady Bagot will wear a train and kirtle lent to her by her husband’s cousin, Lilian, Lady Bagot. The kirtle, which is a red velvet robe trimmed with white ermine, has an ermine collar, to which the red velvet train is attached. Ermine, Diamonds Under the kirtle, she wears “the slip,”-a slender white dress of old lace Her coronet of red velvet and ermine and her diamond tiara were lent to her by another of her husband’s cousins Lady Brooke.
It was a colour pattern in which the wives of Australian officials and other Australian women visitors had a role to play, while four Australians— Lady Bruce, Lady Gifford, Lady Bagot, and Lady Baillieu — were among the peeresses in crimson velvet and ermine, with crimson velvet lining the huge pearls of their coronets.
Later that year, in November, Lady Bagot wore the Tiara with her Emerald Earrings and Necklace for the Staffordshire Society’s annual Banquet at the Hyde Park Hotel in London.
Following Lord Bagot’s death in 1961, Lady Bagot, who owned Blithfield Hall, wore another Diamond Tiara when she remarried in 1965, but the fate of either Tiara remains unknown, though the family of Lord Bagot’s sister continue to reside in a portion of Blithfield Hall.
History of Famous Jewels and Collections
