George Francis Child-Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey (15 February 1910 – 9 August 1998), was an English peer and banker from the Villiers family. Lord Jersey gave one of the family seats, Osterley Park, to the British nation in the late 1940s. Early life He was the son of George Child-Villiers, 8th Earl of Jersey and the former Lady Cynthia Almina Constance Mary Needham. He had three younger siblings, Lady Joan Child Villiers (wife of David Colville), Edward Mansel Child Villiers (who married Barbara Mary Frampton and, secondly, to Princess Maria Gloria Pignatelli Aragona Cortez, only daughter of Prince Antonia Pignatelli Aragona Cortez, Duke of Terranova), and Lady Ann Child Villiers (the wife of Maj. Alexander Henry Elliot). His paternal grandparents were Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey, and the Hon. Margaret Elizabeth (daughter of William Leigh, 2nd Baron Leigh). Among his extended Villiers family were aunts Lady Margaret Child Villiers (wife of Walter Rice, 7th Baron Dynevor), Lady Mary Julia Child Villiers (wife of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford) and Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (wife of Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany). His maternal grandparents were Francis Needham, 3rd Earl of Kilmorey, and Ellen Constance Baldock (a daughter of Edward Holmes Baldock, a Conservative MP for Shrewsbury). He was educated at Eton College before attending Christ Church, Oxford. Career Upon the death of his father at Middleton Park in December 1923, he succeeded as the 9th Earl of Jersey and inherited nearly 20,000 acres of land in England. Lord Jersey was a clerk with Glyn, Mills & Co. in 1932 and served as chairman of Wallace Brothers Sassoon Bank (taken over by the Standard Chartered Bank in 1976). He fought in World War II, gaining the rank of Major in the Royal Artillery of the Territorial Army. The 9th Earl was responsible for the remodelling of the family seat, Middleton Park in Oxfordshire, and employed Edwin Lutyens as an architect. When he tried to give Middleton to the National Trust, they refused on the grounds that the house had been remodelled by Lutyens – whose houses they now seek particularly. The 9th Earl gave Osterley Park in Hounslow to the nation in the late 1940s; he said of that house, "it took a trained staff of 12 to bring me a boiled egg in the morning, and the egg was always cold by the time it got