Eustace Balfour
However, his appointment as surveyor of the Grosvenor Estate in London gave him architectural control over much of Mayfair and Belgravia in the 1890s and 1900s, and the opportunity to design many buildings himself.
[1] His paternal grandfather James Balfour was a nabob who had made the family's fortune as a contractor supplying the Royal Navy in India and became a Tory Member of Parliament (MP),[4] while his mother's father was a Conservative cabinet minister in the 1850s.
[8] He then studied architecture under Basil Champneys, the designer of Newnham College, Cambridge, before setting up his own practice in 1879,[9] with an office in Addison Road, North Kensington which was also his home until his death.
These included the restoration of Inveraray Castle for his father-in-law the Duke of Argyll, an extension to his brother Arthur's hunting lodge Strathconan House in Ross-shire,[3] and the church of St Mary Magdalene in the hamlet of Hatfield Hyde.
[12] Together the two men were engaged to rebuild Ampton Hall in Suffolk, which had been destroyed by fire[13] Their design, in a restrained Jacobean style, was Balfour's only major country house commission.
[3] Work was scarce after Ampton's completion in 1889, and in 1890 Balfour applied for the post of surveyor for the 1st Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Estate, to succeed Thomas Cundy.
[2] He was the son-in-law of a Duke, nephew of a Marquess, and his wife was the sister-in-law of Queen Victoria's 4th daughter Princess Louise (who had married her oldest brother John in 1871).
[2] Even so, his brother Gerald's wife Lady Elizabeth Balfour noted that when the surveyor called on the Duke in his professional role he was "never offered a chair and never expected one".
He had little affinity with the hedonistic young Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke (grandson of the 1st), who Edwin Lutyens and others had persuaded to adopt a less rigid architectural policy.
[25] In July 1899, as the Second Boer War loomed, Balfour offered to raise a thousand men to go and fight, but it was considered too early to begin that effort.
[26] His offer to the minister George Wyndham was ignored by the War Office, and Balfour reacted angrily, complaining that volunteers were "expected to be fit for service while we are vigorously debarred from seeing any".
[26] However, Balfour's need to liaise with the 2nd Duke of Westminster, who had just inherited the Grosvenor Estate, prevented him from joining his force when they travelled to South Africa at the end of 1899.
[3] He remained in command of the London Scottish until late 1902, when he resigned in protest at financial controls that prevented payments to volunteers if there was an insufficient number of raised troops.
[32] Despite his differences with government, or possibly because of them,[3] King Edward VII appointed Balfour in January 1903 as a military aide-de-camp for Volunteer Forces, with the substantive rank of colonel.
