Desmond Flower, 10th Viscount Ashbrook

Who was Desmond Flower, 10th Viscount Ashbrook?

Desmond Llowarch Edward Flower, 10th Viscount Ashbrook KCVO, MBE, DL, JP was an Irish peer and soldier.

Flower was the only son of Llowarch Flower, 9th Viscount Ashbrook and his wife Gladys Lucille Beatrice, daughter of George Higginson. He was educated at Eton College and went then to Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1927. Ashbrook worked as a chartered accountant, succeeding to his father's titles on 30 August 1936. During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Artillery, assigned to the Territorial Army and leaving as a major. After the end of the war in 1945, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

In 1949 Flower was nominated a Deputy Lieutenant for the county of Cheshire and in 1961 vice lord-lieutenant. From 1946, he represented the county also as a Justice of the Peace, retiring from these posts in 1968. Flower joined the council of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1957. He was invested as a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1977 and was director of the Country's Gentlemen Association.

On 8 November 1934, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Captain John Egerton-Warburton; they had three children, two sons and a daughter. Flower died in 1995 and was succeeded in the viscountcy by his older son Michael.