Thomas Gambier Parry

[2] He moved to Highnam Court, Gloucestershire when he was 21 and, in 1839, he married, firstly, Anna Maria Isabella Fynes-Clinton, daughter of Henry Fynes Clinton.

Thomas Gambier Parry was a notable collector of medieval and Renaissance art; the Courtauld Institute was bequeathed his collection in 1966.

He gained the reputation of a philanthropist, founding a children's hospital, orphanage, and college of science and art at Gloucester, and providing a church and school for his tenants at Highnam.

He constructed the Church of the Holy Innocents, Highnam between 1849 and 1851 in memory of his first wife and those of his children who had died at early ages.

Many of his purchases were made on trips to the Continent, especially in Italy, but he also bought from dealers and auctions in England, and sometimes sold items.

His most important collections were of late medieval and Early Renaissance paintings, small sculpted reliefs, ivories, and maiolica, but he also had a significant early collection of Islamic metalwork, and a variety of other types of objects, for example Hispano-Moresque ware, glass and three small post-Byzantine wooden crosses from Mount Athos, elaborately carved with miniature scenes.

[6] Some items, including two Van Dyck portraits and The Gamblers by the Le Nain Brothers, as well as a collection of stoneware ceramics, were excluded from the bequest and remained at Highnam.

The most significant of these are three ivories in the Victoria and Albert Museum (who also have four 16th-century Limoges enamels sold in 1871) and a chasse reliquary that reached the National Gallery of Art in Washington via the Widener collection.

[9] Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet (1848–1918) was a leading English composer, teacher and historian of music.