Feature Interview with Michael Pearson, the fourth Viscount Cowdray
Meet theother
LordCowdray S
tories about polo’s post-war revival at Cowdray Park revolve around the late third Viscount, whose passion for the game was legendary. Much less in the limelight is his heir
Michael Pearson, not a player, who for 15 years has presided over the thriving club and estate and lived at Cowdray House with his family. Something of an enigma to the wider polo world, the fourth Viscount watches many of Cowdray’s big games from the Royal Box with his wife Marina and various family members – to all appearances with great pleasure. He’s tall, bearded and stylish, his commanding yet relaxed demeanour giving barely a hint of the playboy, rebel or hippy he is variously said to have been. To find out more about the man who owns the
world’s most famous countryside polo club I met Michael Pearson at his office at home, where he spoke frankly about his life, over coffee with Manuka honey.
Michael grew up at Cowdray, though his parents – John and his first wife, Lady Anne – separated in 1946 when he was two. Anne set up her own kindergarten boarding school in Wiltshire, largely for young children of Services families who’d been posted abroad. Michael and his sisters, Teresa and Jane, spent term-time there – Michael later went to Cothill and Gordonstoun – and school holidays at Cowdray (Anne, who died last year aged 95, went on to make her garden, Broadleas, one of Wiltshire's horticultural treasures and it's still open to the public today). John Cowdray married
56 July 2010
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Michael Pearson as a boy. Opposite: scores of family albums are filled with pictures and press cuttings
again in 1952 and had more children, Lucy, Charles and Rosanna.
So what was it like growing up at Cowdray House with polo's “godfather” as a dad? “My father was a busy man, running Pearson Group [as chairman from 1954 to 1977] and two estates, here [16,500 acres] and in Scotland [50,000],” says Michael.
“He loved farming, management and forestry and the fact he had one arm [the third Viscount
On the 100th anniversary of Cowdray Park Polo Club Michael Pearson, the fourth Viscount, talks frankly to Yolanda Carslaw about his happy childhood, choosing E-types over polo ponies and the family move from Cowdray House
lost his left arm at Dunkirk in the Second World War] didn’t stop him doing anything. “He entertained a lot at weekends and there were endless house parties. As children we were woken in the middle of the night by raucous goings-on, water-fights and so on – and we'd get up in the morning to a complete mess!” For the polo crowd John Cowdray was the benefactor, the post-war pioneer. But what was he like as a dad? “We had our own nursery area and didn't have great contact with our father,” says Michael. “He was expectant of us and we were quite fearful of him, but that was his generation, who didn't know how to show their feelings, and I think it had a lot to do with the war. I think when friends and family died it hardened people.” Michael’s father, grandfather and great- grandfather all played polo avidly. “My father had high expectations of me,” Michael recalls. “But he hadn't understood that if you want children to do something you encourage rather than force them. I was made to ride every day and I grew to hate it. At 13 I had a moderately bad fall and it was just the excuse I was looking for! With Charles [Pearson, his second son] my father used encouragement rather than pressure and he played happily for years.”
He adds: “I never had a problem watching: there were so many fun people involved and we got to know the characters.”
In summer the house parties revolved around polo; in winter, shooting – and a tour of the farm would always figure, too. “One of my father's
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Photographs by Vanessa Taylor and courtesy of the Pearson family
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