Tuesday 16th July 2024  

Quorn and Royalty - Prince and Princess Henry of Pless

Prince Henry of Pless (now Pszczyna in Poland) was born in April 1861 and in 1891 he married Mary Theresa Olivia Cornwallis-West at St Margaret’s Church in Westminster. The witnesses at their wedding were Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and his wife Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Although officially she was Princess Henry of Pless, she was more generally known as Princess Daisy.

In 1892 William Farnham and his wife of Quorn House on Meeting Street went on a world tour, and in the ‘Gentlewoman’ publication dated 7th January 1893, it was reported:
“At Loughborough - Prince Henry of Pless has taken Mr W E Farnham’s house at Quorn near Leicester for four months”.

The Wrexham Advertiser (and other newspapers), dated 14th January 1893 reported:
“The World says : — The infant heir or heiress to the Pless princedom will probably be born next month at Quorn Hall, which Prince Henry [of] Pless has rented for four months. Colonel and Mrs Cornwallis West, with their son and young daughter (who is considered even lovelier than her sister) were staying there for Christmas ; but great disappointment has been felt on account of this "seasonable weather." Prince Henry is passionately fond of hunting, and went to Leicestershire especially for that purpose.”

Hubert Hawkes Woodward of Quorn, who was aged ninety years of age in 1973, remembered the Prince and Princess renting Quorn House for the 1892/93 for the hunting season. He recalled that “There was a heavy fall of snow during the winter and the village experienced the novel sight of sledges being driven about by the Prince and his retinue.”

The Loughborough Herald on 5th January 1893 noted their presence at the second annual hunt ball which was held in the Quorn Village Hall and even into February, they were following the hunt, albeit in a phaeton (a type of coach). The press later announced that Princess Henry had been safely delivered of a baby girl at Quorn House on Sunday 26th February 1893.

Meanwhile in another house in Quorn, specifically at Quorn House’s Home Farm on Leicester Road, another baby had been born two days earlier on 24th February 1893, to farmer Thomas Pepper and his wife Fanny. Harry Limbert, who in the 1990s recorded the memories of many elderly people from Quorn, was told a remarkable story about how the Peppers could potentially have been involved in a ‘baby swap’. The story he was told referred to the ‘Duke of Hess’ and seems to have happened to the previous Pepper generation, but lack of evidence for the Duke and Duchess of Hess ever visiting Quorn and the coincidence of the Pless/Pepper birthdates, seem to point to the story referring to the Prince and Princess of Pless and 1893. The story tells how the Peppers supplied Quorn House with all their eggs and butter etc and became friendly with the Prince and Princess. Harry Limbert was told that the Prince “dearly wanted a little boy to carry on with the family title” and hearing that the Peppers had produced a little boy, he made a proposition “would he care to swap his little boy for their little girl?”. Thomas Pepper refused. Assuming both the story and the assumptions are true, the potential ‘young prince’ would have been Cecil Algernon Pepper, who grew up to farm Quorn’s other ‘Home Farm’ on Soar Road.

Sadly the baby girl died of convulsions, unnamed, on 11th March 1893. The press on Thursday 16th March 1893 reported:
“The infant daughter of the Prince and Princess Henry of Pless. who died on Saturday night [11th March], fourteen days from its birth, was removed on Wednesday from Quorn House, Leicester, to Furstenstein, for burial in the family vault the House of Pless.”

This story was brought to the attention of Quorn Village On-line Museum by Claire Armitage of Quorn. Claire was on holiday and visited Ksiaz Castle in Lower Silesia in Poland. She read that the castle was the home of Princess Daisy of Pless and whilst reading a timeline of her life, she was surprised to find the following entry:
“1893, February 25 - Daisy gives birth to a daughter in Quorn House in Leicestershire. Two weeks later, the child passes away. The unnamed baby girl was interred in the Hochberg Mausoleum in Ksiaz.”

Below are several photographs Claire took of Ksiaz Castle, Princess Daisy’s former home, together with a copy of a memoir written by the princess herself. The book makes no reference to the time spent in Quorn and there is just a brief mention of her baby girl, when her eldest son is born in 1900. The prince and princess went on to have three sons.

Submitted on: 2022-11-23 Submitted by: Claire Armitage and Sue Templeman Artefact ID: 2513 Artefact URL: www.quornmuseum.com/display.php?id=2513 Print: View artefact in printer-friendly page or just on its own (new browser tab).