Clementine Hozier

Clementine Hozier 1885-1977 lived with her mother and elder sister in apartments at 9 and 11 Pelham Road from 1895 to 1899. Part of the original terrace of houses were destroyed following a bombing raid in 1942 have since been replaced by Welbeck Court and Beach Croft. Clementine Hozier married Winston Churchill in 1908 and subsequently became a life peer in her own right.

Her parents are stated as being Blanche Ogilvy (the eldest daughter of the 10th Earl of Airlie and Colonel Henry Hozier, they had married in 1878. The marriage was not a successful one. Henry Hozier had been married ten years earlier and was divorced from his first wife, Elizabeth Lyon on the grounds of adultery in the same year he married Blanche. Clementine was the Hozier's second child, and two more were to follow. Mary Soames in her biography “Clementine Churchill" relates that there was some doubt whether Henry Hozier was the father of any of the children and cites the well known (at the time) promiscuity of Blanche. Notwithstanding the mutual lack of fidelity the marriage "staggered on" until 1891 were divorce proceedings were instigated. The biography later mentions that from 1895 the Hozier family spent many months of the year in furnished apartments in Seaford and gives the address as 9 and 11 Pelham Road Seaford. Their landladies were the Misses Rolls, Caroline and Emily. Blance Hozier appears to have stayed with Caroline at No 9 (now Beach Croft) while Clementine and her older sister Kitty stayed at No 11 (now Welbeck Court). It would appear the Hozier children enjoyed their time at Seaford. However in 1899 the family suddenly left Seaford and boarded the ferry at Newhaven bound for Dieppe. Mary Soames alludes that Blanche thought that her former husband might try to gain custody of Kitty and Clementine and had resided in Seaford so as to be able to remove herself and her family to France quickly should the need arise. So in the summer of 1899 the family decamped along with dogs initially to La Ferme des Colombiers in the village of Puys and later to a town house in Dieppe. Dieppe was a very fashionable resort at this time, full of chic Paris society for the summer season and Kitty and Clementine, by then 16 and 14 respectively must have found France a lot more exciting than Seaford. Mary Soames's book is a very entertaining read about Hoziers.

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