Olive, Lady Baillie (24 September 1899 – 9 September 1974) was an Anglo-American heiress, landowner and hostess. She is best known as the owner of Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, Kent, England. On her death the castle was bequeathed to a charitable trust to enable it to be open to the public.
Early life
Olive Cecilia Paget was born in Manhattan in the United States on 24 September 1899. She was the elder daughter of the Englishman Almeric Paget (1861–1949), a Member of Parliament for Cambridge who later became the 1st Baron Queenborough, and the American heiress Pauline Payne Whitney (1874–1916), who married in 1895. Her younger sister, Dorothy Wyndham Paget, was born in 1905. Before her parents' marriage, her father had lived in the United States for many years, "engaging in ranch life and farming in the Northwest, and afterward lived in New York."
Her maternal grandparents were Flora (née Payne) Whitney and William Collins Whitney, the United States Secretary of the Navy under President Grover Cleveland. Among her mother's side of the family was uncle Harry Payne Whitney (who married Gertrude Vanderbilt); uncle Payne Whitney (who married Helen Hay); and aunt Dorothy Payne Whitney (who married twice, first to investment banker Willard Dickerman Straight and, after his death, to Englishman Leonard Knight Elmhirst). Her paternal grandparents were Cecilia (née Wyndham) Paget and Lord Alfred Paget, the fifth son of the Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey, who commanded the British cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo. Among her father's side of the family was Arthur Paget; Sydney Paget; and Alexandra Paget (wife of Edward Colebrooke, 1st Baron Colebrooke).
When their mother died in 1916, Olive and her sister Dorothy inherited $4,000,000 to be divided between the girls. Both girls were already legatees under the will of their mother's uncle, Col. Oliver Hazard Payne, an early Standard Oil investor who never married. After their mother's death, her father remarried in 1921 to conspiracy theorist and anti-Mormon agitator Edith Starr Miller, a daughter of the American real estate investor William Starr Miller. Through her father's second marriage, which ended in divorce in 1932, she had three younger half-sisters, Audrey Elizabeth Paget, an aviatrix; Enid Louise Paget; and Cicilie Carol Paget.
Olive was educated in France and, in 1918, during World War I, she served briefly as a wartime nurse.
Personal life
On 21 July 1919, Lady Olive was married to the Hon. Charles John Frederick Winn (1896–1968), son of Rowland Winn, 2nd Baron St Oswald of Nostell Priory in Yorkshire. Before their separation in 1924 and divorce in 1925 (he later married Katherine van Heukelom and Theodora Thorpe), they were the parents of two daughters:
Pauline Katharine Winn (b. 1920), who married Hon. Edward Frederick Ward (1907–1987), son of William Ward, 2nd Earl of Dudley. They divorced in 1947 and, in 1948, she married Norman Butler (1918–2011). They divorced in 1958, and, in 1960, she married Boyd de Brossard. Susan Mary Sheila Winn (1923–2001), who married to Geoffrey Russell, 4th Baron Ampthill (1921–2011).
In May 1925, she married Arthur Wilson-Filmer (1895–1968), the son of MP Arthur Stanley Wilson and Alice Cecil Agnes (née Filmer) Wilson, and grandson of shipping magnate Arthur Wilson and Sir Edmund Filmer, 9th Baronet. The Wilson-Filmers bought Leeds Castle in 1926–27 but were divorced in December 1930, after which Olive retained possession of the castle.
On 4 November 1931, she married Sir Adrian William Maxwell Baillie, 6th Baronet, thus gaining the title of Lady Baillie. Together, they had one son:
Gawaine George Hope Baillie (1934–2003), who married Lucille Margot Beaubien, the daughter of Senator Louis Beaubien of Montreal, in 1966.
Sir Adrian and Lady Baillie divorced in 1944; he died in 1947 at which point her son became the 7th Baronet. Lady Baillie died in London on 9 September 1974, aged 75. Her estate amounted to about £4.08 million.