Nancy Lancaster was born Nancy Keene Perkins as the elder daughter of Thomas Moncure Perkins, a Virginia cotton broker, and his wife Elizabeth Langhorne, a daughter of Chiswell Langhorne.
12 Facts About Nancy Lancaster
2.
Nancy Lancaster's birthplace was Mirador, the estate farm of her maternal grandfather, in Greenwood, near Charlottesville, Virginia.
3.
Nancy Lancaster was brought up in Richmond, Virginia and New York City.
4.
Nancy Lancaster had four maternal aunts, of whom the most notable were Nancy, Lady Astor, a British politician, and Irene Gibson, wife of artist Charles Dana Gibson, who popularized the Gibson Girl.
5.
Nancy Lancaster's cousin Joyce Grenfell was a celebrated British monologuist and actress.
6.
Nancy Lancaster died five months later during the influenza pandemic of 1918.
7.
In 1920 Nancy Lancaster married journalist and investor Ronald Tree, a cousin of her first husband.
8.
At first the Trees took a 10-year repairing lease on Kelmarsh Hall near Market Harborough in Northamptonshire, which Nancy Lancaster redecorated with help from Mrs Guy Bethell of Elden Ltd.
9.
Nancy Lancaster later claimed that it was the suffocating, day-to-day intimacy of marriage that made her realise why they were successful as lovers and ill-suited as husband and wife.
10.
In 1950, Nancy Lancaster was forced to sell her beloved Mirador and in 1954 she bought Haseley Court near Oxford.
11.
Nancy Lancaster renovated and decorated the house with the help of her business partner, John Fowler.
12.
Nancy Lancaster died in 1994 and is buried in Virginia, between her first husband and the infant daughter from her second marriage.