Herbert Joseph Weld Blundell (1852 – 5 February 1935) was an English traveller in Africa,archaeologist, philanthropist andyachtsman. He shortened his surname fromWeld Blundell to Weld, in 1924.
He was educated atStonyhurst College. He travelled toPersia in 1891, then for a decade 1894 to 1905 in North Africa and East Africa.[1] He was a correspondent for theMorning Post during theSecond Boer War.[2] Expeditions included
In 1921–1922 he presented the Weld Blundell Collection to theUniversity of Oxford.[9]
He backed a 1923 expedition to the Yemen,[10] and the Field Museum-Oxford University Joint Expedition to Mesopotamia (Kish).[11]
In 1923 he married Theodora Mclaren-Morrison, who died in 1928. In the same year he inheritedLulworth Castle, from a cousin, Reginald Joseph Weld Blundell. In 1928, on the death of Reginald's brother Humphrey, he inherited the rest of theLulworth Estate, of theWeld-Blundell family.[12]
In 1923 he started campaigning against Army use ofBindon Hill as a firing range, the beginning of the long conflict that centred on the fate ofTyneham and other parts of the Lulworth Estate.[13] From 1924 he owned a largeyacht, S/YLulworth.[14] It was a prominent racing craft of its time, competing 28 times in 1925 and always placing in the first three.[15]
In 1929, Weld's intention to sell two family heirlooms, theLuttrell Psalter and theBedford Book of Hours atSotheby's came up against a legal issue, when just three days before these famous illuminated manuscripts were due to go under the hammer, it was discovered byBritish Museum lawyers that they and all the heirlooms and 'chattels' in Lulworth Castle were apparently the property of Mrs Mary Angela Noyes, née Mayne, wife of the poetAlfred Noyes, earlier married to Richard Shireburn Weld-Blundell, the Weld-Blundell heir who had been killed in 1916.[16][17][18] Weld went to court, but his appeal was rejected only a few hours before the sale. The British Museum then purchased both manuscripts from Mrs Noyes with a loan fromJohn Pierpont Morgan.[19][20] Later in 1929 Lulworth Castle was badly damaged by fire, and some of the disputed heirlooms were burned.[21] Upon his death, the Lulworth Estate passed to a cousin,Joseph William Weld, subsequently aLord Lieutenant of Dorset.
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