Bruce Canning Vernon-Wentworth

Who was Bruce Canning Vernon-Wentworth?

Bruce Canning Vernon-Wentworth was a British army officer and Conservative Party politician.

The eldest son of Thomas Frederick Charles Vernon Wentworth of Wentworth Castle near Barnsley, Yorkshire and Dall House, Rannoch, Perthshire and his wife Lady Harriet Augusta Canning de Burgh, daughter of the Marquess of Clanricarde and grand daughter of former prime minister George Canning.

Educated at Harrow and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he received a commission into the Grenadier Guards, rising to the rank of captain.

A member of the Conservative Party, he unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary constituency of Barnsley on three occasions. He entered the Commons at an unopposed by-election in 1893, when he was elected to represent Brighton. He held the seat until the 1906 general election.

Vernon-Wentworth was a director of the London and Yorkshire Bank and of the Yorkshire local board of the National Provincial Bank Limited. He sold Wentworth Castle to Barnsley Corporation in 1948, and died unmarried in 1951, aged 88.