Select Items From the Estate of the Late Lady Penn

LADY PENN

Lady Penn, who was affectionately known as Prue, died in November last year at the age of 97. She was born Prudence Wilson in Australia in 1926, and took the name Stewart-Wilson in 1937 when the family returned to Great Britain. She had Scottish ancestry on both her paternal and paternal lines; her father was Aubyn Wilson, of St. Andrews, Fife, while her mother Muriel, the 10th lady of Balnakeilly, could trace her ancestry back to 1559 and Neil Stewart, of Foss House, Perthshire.

Photo © The Family

Prue was trained at her last school in typing and shorthand, and took a job in the Foreign Office, and later the male-dominated MI6, where she worked alongside Kim Philby, who was later discovered to be a KGB double agent. She met her husband, who was in the Grenadier Guards, in 1946 at a dance which she attended in a dress she had made from curtains, an example of her practicality and resourcefulness combined with the realities of post-war rationing. Eric’s uncle, Sir Arthur Penn, GCVO, MC, was a close friend of the Queen Mother and it was through Eric that she came to know both the then Princess Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret and a lifelong friendship began. The Queen Mother and the then Princess Elizabeth attended the Penns' wedding at St. Mark’s Church, Mayfair, in January 1947. The couple had three children, two sons and a daughter, and Lady Penn was one of the godmothers to Princess Margaret’s daughter Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones.

Sir Eric formally entered the royal household in 1960, on the encouragement of Sir Arthur, and was appointed Assistant Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain's Office. He was promoted to Comptroller in 1964 and served in the role until 1981, when he retired.

In addition to Sternfield House, their home in Saxmundham Suffolk, Sternfield House, the couple also had an apartment in St. James’s Palace, but always maintained a close connection with Scotland. In 1994, Lady Penn became lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, a role in which she remained until her HM’s death in 2002. Even during her later years, she remained close with the royals, attending the Queen’s 90th birthday party in 2016 and had a phone conversation with Her Majesty just ten days before she died. Lady Penn spent much of her later years at her home in the East Neuk of Fife and was appointed LVO in the 2002 demise honours list.

Lyon & Turnbull is pleased to offer lots 126, 128, 129, 336-365, and 381, some with royal provenance in our current Five Centuries auction taking place on the 4th and 5th of September.