Baroness Howard de Walden, unassuming steward of London landholding

That much of central London is owned by a handful of aristocratic families is well-known. Less familiar are the custodians of these great estates. The Duke of Westminster and Earl Cadogan eschew the spotlight as much as they can. Even more unassuming was the steward of the third largest landholding in the capital: Hazel Czernin, 10th Baroness Howard de Walden.
When her father, the 9th Baron Howard de Walden, died in 1999, the barony fell into abeyance between his daughters because he had no sons. After five years of family discussions between Hazel and her three younger sisters, she claimed the title.
She was then nearing 70. With her sisters, she was appointed a director of the property company which runs the Howard de Walden estate. Thereafter she participated in key decisions it made.
In particular, the family lent impetus to the transformation of Marylebone High Street over the past 20 years into one of London’s chicest shopping destinations. This substantially boosted the profits of the estate, which encompasses 92 acres and 800 buildings between Regent’s Park and Oxford Street.
It includes Harley Street, synonymous with medicine. About 40 per cent of the estate is rented to the profession, and in 2007 many detected the hand of Lady Howard de Walden, a Roman Catholic, in clauses banning Harley Street tenants from performing abortions.
Bought by the 1st Duke of Newcastle in 1711, Marylebone village came down in 1889 to the widow of the 6th Baron Howard de Walden. That family had gained the peerage in 1597, when Thomas Howard was rewarded for his role as admiral in the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
By the 1990s, the estate’s leases on Marylebone High Street were overly skewed towards fashion. Economic recession meant some shops lay empty, while 18 were occupied by charities. When Lord Howard de Walden died, the estate was valued (if rather conservatively) at £200 million and had income of £5 million.
His descendants pushed for a long-term, more upmarket strategy. A series of savvy executives working for the estate took the time to understand the needs of small retailers who might want to open a boutique or a café. Bibliophiles began to be drawn to Daunt Books, cheese lovers to La Fromagerie, and later celebrities to Chiltern Firehouse.
Some £250 million was invested by the estate between 2002 and 2012, with profits rising from £8.5 million to £31 million. Accordingly, in 2012 its owners took a dividend of £150 million by revaluing the estate. Some £42 million went to Howard de Walden and her sisters, the remainder to dozens of members of the wider family.
The pandemic dented rental income, but in 2023 the family banked another dividend of £50 million. Annual income by then was £150 million and their portfolio now has a value of about £4.5 billion.
That made Howard de Walden, as titular head of the family business, one of the half-dozen richest women in Britain in 2020 according to the Sunday Times Rich List. With an annual bill approaching £50 million, she was also one of its top 20 taxpayers.
She was born Mary Hazel Caridwen Scott-Ellis in London in 1935. Like her three younger sisters — Susan, Jessica and Camilla — Hazel, as she was known, was given a Celtic middle name. Her paternal grandfather had close ties to Wales.
Her father liked to tell how he might have changed the course of history. While studying German in Munich in 1931, he was driving an unfamiliar car when he knocked down a pedestrian. Fortunately, at the time, the man was all right. His name was Adolf Hitler.
John Scott-Ellis met Hitler again on his honeymoon in 1934, having married Irene Gräfin von Harrach, known as “Nucci” and an Austrian aristocrat. He succeeded to the family titles in 1946, also inheriting family interests which included a bank in Nassau and newspapers in East Africa, subsequently sold to Lonrho.
His chief interest, however, was racing. He served three times as senior steward of the Jockey Club, and in 1985 his horse Slip Anchor won the Derby. Apricot, the colour of his silks, had been recommended to his father by the artist Augustus John as likely to stand out against the green of the turf. As well as Dean Castle, in Kilmarnock, he owned three studs, one at Newmarket, and Hazel inevitably grew up around horses.
In 1953, when she was 17, at a ball given at the Austrian Embassy to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation, she went out onto a balcony and there met Count Joseph Czernin von und zu Chudenitz. A decade her senior, he was of a cadet branch of a Bohemian family that had risen to prominence in service of the Habsburgs.
After the German takeover of Prague, he had been sent to the Reich for forced labour. There he survived being strafed by the RAF while picking potatoes. Aspiring to a diplomatic career after the war, he came to London to improve his English.
When communism tightened its grip, he was advised not to return home. For a time, he shared a garret with a friend who had similarly grand antecedents and slender resources. Whichever of them gained entrée of an evening to an embassy reception or coming-out dance would purloin food to bring home to the other, tucked into the long tails of their jacket.
He and Hazel were married in 1957. They had five daughters — Charlotte, Henrietta, Alexandra, Philippa and Isabelle — all of whom had families of their own. Their fifth-born child, Peter, succeeds as 11th Baron Howard de Walden. A former flatmate of David Cameron, he is the Bafta-winning producer of films such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), Three Buildboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) and All of Us Strangers (2023).
Count Czernin, who worked for Shell and later in investment, had a passion for shooting — he brought down his first pigeon at the age of six, in the grounds of the Waldstein Palace, Prague — but also for helping others. He arranged for the covert supply of medicines that were hard to find behind the Iron Curtain and each year guided pilgrims at Lourdes. He died in 2015.
As well as supporting her husband’s endeavours, Howard de Walden took a particular interest herself in the community work of the estate. Modesty and charities, such as Cafod and the Cardinal Hume Centre, were close to her heart, befitting her two family mottos: Non Quo Sed Quomodo (Not by whom, but in what manner); and In Tenebris Lux (Light in darkness).
The 10th Baroness Howard de Walden, landowner, was born on August 12, 1935. She died on July 13, 2024, aged 88