Hwfa Williams

A figure of the Marlborough House Set,[1] he was a close associate of the future King Edward VII, and his wife Mrs. Hwfa Williams (née Farquharson) a leader of the fashionable world.

[4] The land on which Sandown Park racecourse was constructed came into the extended Williams family when Lord Charles Ker and an associate named Millward made an opportunistic purchase.

Ker, a son of James Innes-Ker, 7th Duke of Roxburghe and officer of the Scots Fusilier Guards, had married in 1866 Hwfa's sister Blanche Mary.

Sir William Fraser, 1st baronet, of Ledeclune, Inverness, himself "principal managing owner of several vessels in the service of the East India Company at the time of the Napoleonic Wars".

J. Mordaunt Crook commented on Hamilton's smart set list, led off by the Dowager Duchess of Manchester, as thoroughly parvenu, and he noted the predominance of nouveau riche industrial and financial fortunes.

[19] The San Francisco newspaper The Wave in 1899 published a column asserting that "The most prominent untitled people in London may be said to be Mr. and Mrs. Hwfa Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Willie Grenfell and Mr. Algy Bourke.

"[20] In 1911 Mrs Hwfa Williams held a dance in the London season at their house on Ovington Square with Lady Diana Manners and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, at which Anna Pavlova performed.

[23] He quotes also from the diary of Charles à Court Repington an account of a Watlington Park house party of World War I, hosted by Alice Keppel, to which he was invited, guests being "the Hwfa Williamses, Lord Ilchester, Lady Lilian Wemyss, Baroness Daisy de Brienen" with others including Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West.