British Aristocrat Battles Mother over Nigerian Wife

The heir to Longleat, the stately home and seat of the Marquess of Bath in Somerset, England, banned his mother from his wedding and put “security on standby” in case she turned up after she allegedly suggested that marrying his half-Nigerian wife would damage the aristocratic family’s bloodline.

Ceawlin Thynn, 41, whose father is the eccentric Marquess of Bath famed for his

harem of “wifelets”, has also claimed he stopped his mother – the Marchioness of Bath – from seeing his son Hon. John Alexander Ladi Thynn in case the boy is “contaminated” by her views.

Ceawlin’s wife Emma McQuiston, 29, is the daughter of Nigerian oil tycoon, Chief Oladipo (Ladi) Jadesimi founder and Executive Chairman of Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics (LADOL) company, which partnered with Samsung Heavy Industries of Korea in 2013 to win a multi-million dollar contract for the construction of a Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) vessel for Total Oil’s deep water Egina oil field off Nigeria’s coast.

She will become Britain’s first black marchioness when Ceawlin, who took over running the 10,000-acre estate and safari park in Wiltshire in 2010, inherits his father’s title.

On Sunday, Ceawlin – Viscount Weymouth – alleged that when he told his mother that he planned to marry Emma, she replied: “Are you sure about what you’re doing to 400 years of bloodline?”

He tried to ignore it but when she repeated it he decided he had to tell Emma, who was “devastated”. Ceawlin demanded that his mother, who has lived much of her life with a lover in France, return her wedding invitation and “made it clear that under no circumstances would she be attending”, he said in an interview with the British-based Sunday Times newspaper.

Come the day of the wedding at Longleat in June 2013, he was so worried she might turn up and make a scene he put “security on standby to prevent her from accessing the area”, he told The Sunday Times. “All the doors were manned and various corridors and outdoor areas,” he added.

Emma – Viscountess Weymouth – has previously spoken of racism in the British aristocratic circles in which she now mingles.

She once told Tatler magazine: “There has been some snobbishness, particularly among the much older generation. There’s class and then there’s the racial thing.”

Before her marriage to Lord Bath in 1969, Ceawlin’s mother was Anna Gael (née Gyarmathy), an actress who starred in erotic films such as Therese And Isabelle in which she stripped naked and simulated lesbian sex. She was nicknamed the “Naked Lady of Longleat”. Ceawlin also claimed his mother, 71, who has spent more time at Longleat since the death of her lover in France, now ignores Emma if they bump into each other in the stately home’s grounds.

Emma said: “We’re walking towards each other, and the tension is building. I don’t know what she’s going to say, so I say hello first. And then she goes, ‘Oh sorry, I didn’t recognise you’ and keeps walking.”

Ceawlin also claimed his mother has no contact with his 11-month-old son, saying: “I don’t want him contaminated by that sort of atmosphere and those sort of views.” Coincidentally, she has also apparently been banned from appearing in the forthcoming three-part BBC1 documentary All Change at Longleat, about the aristocratic family and the future of its estate.

In a statement in response to the interview given by Ceawlin and Emma, Lady Bath said she “did not know” she was banned from seeing her grandson, whom she described as “a lovely little chap”.

She said she had promised her children she would tell them what she thought about their “serious partners”, adding: “Then I would never mention it again. That is what I did with my son.”

It is the latest rift to emerge in the family. Lord Bath, 83, fell out with Ceawlin after discovering that he had taken down some of the murals at Longleat House, the family’s 130-room Elizabethan mansion, and refused to turn up to Ceawlin and Emma’s wedding.

A source close to the family said: “Bath family politics are always colourful and difficult. All parties involved are attempting to move on and live normal lives.”

Following the row with his mother two years ago, Ceawlin is still not on speaking terms with the Marchioness and “works hard to avoid her” when she visits Longleat from her home in Paris.

He has also fallen out with his father, the Marquess of Bath, after taking over the reins at the estate in 2010.

Lord Bath - nicknamed “Loins of Longleat” - famously fell out with his son in 2012 when he removed some erotic murals his father had painted for him and his sister when they were children.

Relations between the men were so bad that Lord Bath also missed Ceawlin and Emma's wedding in 2013.

Three years later and the row flared up once more when Cealwin failed to consult his father about a proposed colour scheme while renovating the house.

In a previous interview with The Mail, Lord Bath sniffed: “I suppose I just have to accept what has happened. But my relationship with Ceawlin will not be the same again.

“I don't feel inclined to pay any interest in his wedding.” Instead, he and wife Anna went to a different wedding, of a friend in Hampshire.

ThisdayLive reportage.