page_title: Wilfrid Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Wilfrid Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple / Personal life
context_page_description: Colonel Wilfrid William Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple, PC was a British soldier and Conservative politician. He served as Minister of Transport between 1924 and 1929 under Stanley Baldwin.
context_section_description: Lord Mount Temple married Amalia Mary Maud Cassel, daughter and only child of financier Sir Ernest Cassel, in early January, 1901. Amongst the wedding guests was The Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (the wedding taking place on 4 January, only eighteen days before Albert Edward became King-Emperor), who was a friend of Cassel. The couple had two daughters:
  Edwina, Countess Mountbatten of Burma (1901–1960), who married The 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900–1979)
  Ruth Mary Clarisse (1906–1986), who married Alec Cunningham-Reid (1895–1977) in 1927. They divorced in 1940. She then married Major Ernest Laurie Gardner. They divorced in 1943. In 1944 she married the 4th Baron Delamere (1900–1979). They divorced in 1955.
  Following his first wife's early death in 1911, he married in 1914 Muriel Emily ("Molly") Forbes-Sempill, the former wife of Rear-Admiral The Hon. Arthur Forbes-Sempill, daughter of The Rev. Walter Spencer of Fownhope Court, Herefordshire, and sister of Margery, Viscountess Greenwood.
  Lady Mount Temple had an interest in interior decoration and floral design, which was then highly fashionable; she had a florist business named Flower Decorations. The couple commissioned the architect Oliver Hill to design two Westminster town houses, naming them both Gayfere House. The first house, built at 12 Gayfere Street (1923–26), had a drawing room completely decorated with gold leaf. The second, at the corner of Gayfere Street and Great Peter Street (1929–32), was decorated in Art Deco style, making much use of mirrored walls and ceilings, most famously in a bathroom called by the Press "Lady Mount Temple's Crystal Palace".  She died in 1954.
  The family also owned Classiebawn Castle on the west coast of Ireland. 
  Lord Mount Temple died in July 1939, aged 71, when the barony became extinct.
caption: Portrait of Mrs Wilfrid Ashley (née Muriel ("Molly") Forbes-Sempill) by Philip de László, 1920
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