Mrs Reginald Corbet
(1834-1927)

Volume 1, page 87, sitting number 551. 

Born in 1834, Anna Mary Elizabeth Grey-Egerton was the elder daughter of Sir Philip de Malpas Grey-Egerton, 10th Bt., and Anna Elizabeth née Legh.

On 8 May 1855 she married Henry Reginald Corbet, ‘son and heir of Richard Corbet, Esq., of Adderley Hall’ near Market Drayton (Staffordshire Advertiser, 12 May 1855).

‘Mr Henry Reginald Corbet, of Dale Ford, Tarporley, master of the Cheshire foxhounds and a magistrate of three counties’ was charged with shooting a boy named John Tomlinson on All Hallows night. (The Scotsman, 11 November 1873). As part of a local custom called ‘souling,’ Tomlinson and a number of other boys had gone to Corbet’s hunting-box at Daleford and sung some traditional songs outside the house. ‘Mr Corbet and his servants, it was alleged, went out of the hunting-box and beat the choristers, and Mr Corbet fired several shots among them as they retreated, wounding Tomlinson in the legs’ (Western Times, 11 November 1873).

The couple appear on the 1901 census living at Adderly Hall in Shropshire. Also present on the night of the census were their 44-year-old son Reginald and fifteen servants, including a butler and three footmen.

Henry Reginald Corbet was a ‘member of one of the oldest families in the country, his ancestors having come over with William the Conqueror.’ He died, aged 71, at Adderley Hall on 4 May 1902. ‘The Corbet estates in the neighbourhood of Market Drayton are of a very extensive and valuable character, comprising many rich farms and pastures. […] Always a keen sportsman, the deceased will be remembered for many years as one of the oldest foxhound masters in the kingdom, a position which he was only recently compelled to vacate through failing health, and which is now undertaken by his son and heir as Master of the Cheshire Hounds’ (Banbury Advertiser, 8 May 1902). He left an estate valued at £16,186.

Mrs Corbet died on 3 March 1927 at 62 Pont Street, Belgravia.