Peregrine Eliot, 10th Earl of St Germans


Peregrine Nicholas Eliot, 10th Earl of St Germans, was a British peer and founder of the Elephant Fayre and Port Eliot Lit Fest.

Biography

Peregrine Nicholas Eliot was the son of Nicholas Eliot, 9th Earl of St Germans and his wife Helen Mary née Villers. He was educated at Eton.
In 1963, he became a partner in Seltaeb, the company established to oversee the distribution of Beatles merchandise.
In 1988, on the death of his father, he succeeded as the 10th Earl of St Germans.

Festivals

Elephant Fayre

In 1980 a small festival which had outgrown its site at Polgooth in mid-Cornwall approached the Port Eliot estate and asked if it could be held in the idyllic grounds. The estate office agreed a price, and there began the Elephant Fayre, one of the most eclectic festivals of the 1980s. The festival ran from 1981–1986, beginning with some 1,500 visitors over four days, and featured a mix of music, theatre and visual arts. Over the years the festival grew, attracting crowds of up to 30,000 and bands such as The Cure, The Fall and Siouxsie and the Banshees. The burning down of the oldest tree in the park, looting of the village surgery and the robbing of stall-holders in 1985 prompted Lord Eliot and fellow organisers to make the 1986 festival the last.

Port Eliot Festival

In 2003 Lord St Germans began the Port Eliot Lit Fest.

Marriages & children

He was married three times:
On 9 October 1964 he married Hon. Jacquetta Jean Frederika Lampson, a daughter of Miles Lampson, 1st Baron Killearn. They had three sons:
They were divorced in 1990.
On 20 April 1992 he married Elizabeth Dorothy Williams, with no issue. They were divorced in 1996.
On September 2005 he married Catherine Wilson, with no issue.

Death

Peregrine Eliot, 10th Earl St. Germans died after a short illness on 15 July 2016.

Ancestry