Lord Leven

Lord Ronald Ruthven Leslie-Melville, 11^th Earl of Leven and 10^th Earl of Melville, had an important influence on the lives of the Talbot sisters and the development of Talbot Village.

He was born on the 19^th of December 1835, the son of John Thornton Leslie-Melville and his second wife, Sophia, the daughter of MP, Henry Thornton. He was educated at Windlesham House School and Eton College. In 1854, he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, and two years later, he travelled to Italy, with his close friend Maharajah Duleep Singh. He subsequently graduated from Oxford, with a B.A. in 1858 and an M.A. in 1865.

In 1869, when he was 34, he bought Glenferness House in Scotland as a sporting estate.

Over his lifetime, he undertook many roles, including, Director of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, Deputy Lieutenant for the City of London  and after the Talbot sisters’ deaths he was a Director of the Bank of England from 1884-94.

He was also a keen amateur photographer – and in 1866, he was elected to the Amateur Photographic Association. One of his photos was of Applecross House, in Scotland, but he also travelled as far as Abysinnia or Ethiopia, to take his photographs.

In 1885, he married the Honourable Emma Selina Portman and they subsequently had five children. On the 3^rd of Nov, of that year, Mary Ann Talbot died in 21 Grosvenor Square in London. Her estate was valued at £354,356 19s 4d (about £58 million today). She gave Lord Leven who was their financial adviser over 2 square miles of land – now called Talbot Woods – and he received £100,000 from her will (about £16.4 million), over a third of her estate.

He added a 6^th farm to the village and he established the Talbot Manor Home in Bournemouth in 1890. When he passed away on the 21^st of August 1906, he bequeathed a large sum of money to the Society, so that another new home could be established