Her father was himself a younger son of Alexander Fuller-Acland-Hood, 1st Baron St Audries.
In 1967 she inherited from an uncle her family's ancestral seat, Fairfield House, near Stogursey, Somerset, and gave up her teaching career to concentrate on managing the estate which came with it.
[4] In 1985, two years after being widowed, Gass was elected to Somerset County Council, as a Conservative Party Councillor for the Quantock district, and remained a member until 1997.
In 2011, she attracted considerable negative attention after selling some 230 acres of land on the coast beneath the Quantock Hills for about £50 million.
The land was the part of her Fairfield estate lying immediately to the west of the Hinkley Point power station and was wanted for the construction of two new nuclear reactors.