Lady Harriet Duncombe
(1809-1902)
14 May 1861

Volume 3, page number 233, sitting number 3615.

Born in Scotland in 1809, Lady Harriet Christian Douglas was the daughter of Charles Douglas, 6th Marquess of Queensberry and Lady Caroline née Scott, daughter of Henry Scott, 3rd Earl of Buccleuch. 

On 13 May 1841 she married Reverend Augustus Duncombe, fifth son of Charles Duncombe, 1st Baron Feversham of Duncombe Park, and Lady Charlotte née Legge. Their marriage produced two sons and three daughters.

The family appear on the 1851 census living at 49 Berkeley Square in London. The household included fifteen servants and a Swiss governess. Augustus gave ‘Canon of York Minster’ as his profession. 

From 1858 until his death in 1880 the Very Reverend Augustus Duncombe was the Dean of York. 

Lady Harriet Duncombe died in London at 49 Berkeley Square on 26 July 1902 at the age of 93.

‘With the death of Lady Harriet Duncombe in the 94th year of her age, a quiet but not undistinguished personality passes away. She was Lady Harriet Douglas, the daughter of the fifth [sic] Marquess of Queensberry, when she married the Rev. and Hon. (but they used the Hon. and Rev. in those days) Augustus Duncombe. When her husband was appointed Dean of York the House of Commons wrangled over the nomination as a purely political one, but no Dean was ever so popular in York as Duncombe was; and, having inherited, though a younger son, a large fortune from his father, Lord Feversham, he was able to devote the whole of his stipend as Dean to the preservation of the splendid Minster’s fabric. When he died, 20 years ago, Lady Harriet left the Deanery, and from her house in Berkeley Square she was able to keep an interested eye on the world in which ladies of a younger generation of her husband’s family were reigning beauties’ (Yorkshire Evening Post, 29 July 1902). 

[From an album compiled by Bertha Amelia Yorke, daughter of the Very Rev. and Hon. Grantham Munton Yorke.]