Grainger Weston obituary (2024)

Grainger Weston was the heir apparent who got away. As the eldest son of ­Garfield Weston, he was on the board of the family’s UK master company, controlling Twinings tea, Ryvita, Fortnum and Mason, Heal’s and Primark, as well as Selfridges until last year. Instead he built Frenchman’s Cove in Jamaica, one of the world’s most expensive ­holiday resorts. When that soured he amassed one of the biggest ranches in Texas, leaving the sprawling international family businesses to be run by his brothers, Garry and Galen.

“He was an entrepreneurial spirit,” his son Galvin said. “An original man of fierce independence … who creatively questioned authority at every opportunity.”

The partner in his endeavours was his wife Caroline (obituary June 20, 2017), daughter of the 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, who had married him on one condition: they must embark on any business ventures as equals.

At Frenchman’s Cove, Caroline supervised the ­design of the hotel suites and luxury villas. To justify the $1,000-a-week room rates, the Westons invited glittering names of the day such as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, Noël Coward, Bertrand Russell and Ian Fleming. The resort featured in the first Bond film, Dr No. In 1966 Caroline persuaded Queen Elizabeth II to hold Princess Anne’s 16th birthday party there.

Weston adopted the all-inclusive business model pioneered by the French Club Med in 1950, thinking wealthy guests would not abuse the arrangement. But they had to abandon it after customers bathed in complimentary champagne, made free phone calls to Europe and ordered paté that had to be flown in from France. “It took 16 bottles of Dom Perignon to fill a bathtub, and champagne baths were popular,” said Grainger’s son Greg, who became the Cove’s manager.

Meanwhile, in 1969, Grainger bought an Israeli car ferry and converted it into a Caribbean cruise liner. He sold it in 1975 and moved back to Texas.

He bought land there and devoted the rest of his life to the Santa Clara Ranch, expanding it over the next 60 years to 4,000 acres. Conscious of the environment, he banned chemicals or fertiliser and refused to prune the trees, letting them grow naturally. He installed geothermal air conditioners using cold groundwater to cool the house, and bought a fleet of Volkswagen diesel cars for his family and ranch hands.

“Grainger had a very special ­relationship with his land and the cows,” Galvin said. “He dreamed of the ranch becoming a Lone Star version of an English country estate, preserved for all time and unthreatened by ­encroaching development.”

George Grainger Weston was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1923, the son of ­Reta (née Howard) and Garfield ­Weston. He had six sisters and two brothers. Although he was the second eldest, his older sister Miriam, being ­female, was not deemed a candidate to run the business.

Garfield had inherited his father’s bakery business in Canada and decided that Britain would be a useful outlet for Canadian wheat. He bought his first UK biscuit-maker in 1933 and moved his family two years later to Marlow, ­Buckinghamshire.

Aged 14, Grainger was accidentally shot in the legs during a pheasant shoot, taking a year to recover. He carried ­pieces of shot in his body for the rest of his life and never forgot the impact of the experience.

Although he went to Christ Church, Oxford, his education had to be abandoned when the Second World War began. Instead he joined the Royal Canadian Navy as an officer on patrol ships ­hunting German U-boats. In quiet spells he memorised poetry and Bible ­verses, later learning Spanish, Russian and French, and playing the piano and accordion.

In Canada in 1947, Grainger was ­introduced to the Honourable Caroline Cecily Douglas-Scott-Montagu, whose brother, the 3rd Baron, founded the Beaulieu National Motor Museum. After she returned to England, she ­conducted her courtship with Grainger by letter; they married in 1950 at Beaulieu Abbey Church in the grounds of the family estate.

His father sent them to manage the family’s biscuit factory in Fort Worth, Texas. They lived in a single room at one end of the factory, with the ­bathroom at the other end, waking every morning to the sound of the dough mixer and the aroma of baking.

They had five children, all of whom had to spend holidays in the factory. Galvin, the eldest, runs Charbonnel et Walker, the family’s high-end confectionery business. Sarah became a housewife, Greg runs restaurants in Texas, and Graham is an entrepreneur who has run several American businesses. Their fifth child, Glenn, was the victim of a house fire in 1965 — Galvin was badly burnt trying to save him. He and Caroline divorced in 1987 but remained friends; she died in 2017.

Weston was interested in psychology and personal development, sponsoring educational programmes at Frenchman’s Cove. When he returned from Jamaica he bought a biscuit firm, Grandma’s Cookies, which he sold to Pepsico.

He was a generous contributor to his local community, opening the Weston Soccer Fields and inviting Boy Scout troops to borrow the ranch for camp-outs.

Grainger Weston, businessman, was born on November 12, 1923. He died on October 7, 2023, aged 99