Simon Towneley

Sir Simon Peter Edmund Cosmo William Towneley KCVO KCSG JP (né Koch de Gooreynd; 14 December 1921 – 11 November 2022) was a British author who served as Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire from 1976 to 1997.

[1] Towneley was born in St George Hanover Square, London, on 14 December 1921,[2] as the elder son of a British father of Belgian stock,[3] Alexander Louis Wynand Koch de Gooreynd, and a British-Belgian mother, Priscilla Reyntiens.

[5] The family name was changed to Worsthorne when his father attempted to enter British politics, but his parents divorced soon after.

[8] During the Second World War, Worsthorne served in the King's Royal Rifle Corps, receiving a commission as a second lieutenant in December 1942.

[6] In Towneley's youth, Dyneley Hall in Cliviger (near Burnley), Lancashire, had been the home of his grandmother (Alice Reyntiens), but in 1952 he inherited it along with a landholding known as the Worsthorne Estate.

She was a keen endurance equestrian, repeating Dick Turpin's ride from London to York and opening up what became known as the Mary Towneley Loop on the Pennine Bridleway.

Each Sunday for many years, a Jesuit priest wearing pre-Reformation vestments thought to have come from Whalley Abbey, would say Mass in it.

[13] A long-time member of the International Dendrology Society, Towneley supported many local horticultural projects and created an impressive garden at the hall.