Broughton Hall's Henry Tempest dies aged 93

Mr Tempest who inherited little from his father when his elder brother Stephen died suddenly in 1970 set about saving the estate with the help of his wife Janet. Tempests have been at Broughton 600 years.

Despite an unheated house and a leaking roof and low agricultural incomes he began to turn Broughton Hall's finances around by selling non-essential assets and keeping expenses to a minimum.

He transformed redundant and underused buildings starting with turning the old stables into offices and by the mid 1980s the estate was on a firmer financial footing.

It was the beginning of what has become the award winning Broughton Business Park which in 1988 was taken up and driven forward by his elder son, Roger.

Mr Tempest was Deputy Lieutenant for North Yorkshire from 1981 to 1998 and was a member of North Yorkshire County Council from 1973 to 1987.

He was the second son of Brigadier General Roger and Valerie Arthur Tempest and was educated at The London Oratory and Christchurch, Oxford, where he studied mathematics and physics.

They were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II and in February 1944 he joined the Scots Guards with an Emergency Commission and was transferred to the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards in May 1944.

He was posted to Europe in January 1945 and on March 28 the Scots Guards, together with tanks of the Welsh Guards, crossed the Rhine near Rees.

On April 6 while fighting in the Lingren Forest, he received a head wound from a bullet that ricocheted off his Sten gun. When the wounded were being evacuated Mr Tempest opted to wait until his men had all been picked up and was evacuated in a second vehicle.

The first vehicle hit a mine and all in it were killed. He always maintained that “Good manners saved my life”.

In Oct 1945 he transferred to 32 Guards Brigade and became Staff Captain HQ Guards Division, returning to the UK in July 1947.

When his father died in 1948 the Broughton Estate passed to his elder brother Stephen and Mr Tempest emigrated to Northern Rhodesia where he bought a tract of uncultivated land and started to farm, having first to build a house and facilities always explaining with a smile that the first building to be constructed was the latrine.

In Lusaka he trained as an accountant and practised in both Rhodesia and South Africa until 1961 and met his future wife, Janet Longton. They were married in Salisbury on January 18, 1957.

The couple and young family returned to England in 1961 and he joined the Department of Nuclear Physics in Oxford as Financial Officer. It was where he developed his lifelong love of computers.

He learned how to programme in Fortran and is credited with creating the first computerised accountancy program in the university, using a massive PDP6 mainframe.

Mr Tempest kept very fit all his life, playing polo and show jumping in Africa. In Yorkshire he walked three miles a day with a succession of doting labradors, all named Sable.

When he was approaching eighty he had the ambition to climb Pendle Hill to celebrate his 80th birthday. Two days after his 80th, he climbed Pendle Hill with friends, in perfect weather and sat overlooking Broughton drinking Champagne.

On his 90th birthday, he slid down the banisters at Broughton Hall for the last time to show his grandchildren how it should be done.

In his later years he became quite proud of his role as Lord Tottering in the Tottering by Gently cartoons in Country Life, based on Broughton and created by his daughter Annie. As he got older and with the responsibilities of the estate now passed into the hands of his son Roger, he became less like the Henry Tempest of old and more like Lord Tottering. His champagne cocktails were something to be feared, containing as they did a generous dose of Cognac.

Mr Tempest was a Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a member of Pratts, Boodles and the Lansdowne Club.

He is survived by his wife Janet and his beloved Sable together with his five children, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.