Elsie Bambridge


Elsie Bambridge was the daughter of English writer Rudyard Kipling and Caroline Starr Balestier. She was the only one of the Kipling's three children to survive beyond adolescence.
On 22 October 1924, Elsie Kipling married George Bambridge and in 1938 they bought Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire's largest stately home. Her obituary, in The Times, stated she had two missions in life, "to maintain the traditions of her husband Captain George Bambridge and her father Rudyard Kipling". On her death, in 1976, having no children, she bequeathed her property and its contents to the National Trust. The Trust later donated her father's manuscripts to the University of Sussex in Brighton, to ensure better public access to them. She is buried in the graveyard of St Andrew's church on the estate.