Claude Lancaster Claude Granville Lancaster ( 30 August 1899 – 25 July 1977 ) was a British Army officer , coal industry director , and Conservative Party politician . Family and early life . Claude Lancaster was born on 30 August 1899 , the son of George Granville Lancaster , who bought Kelmarsh Hall near Market Harborough , Leicestershire , in 1902 . Claude Lancaster ' s grandfather was John Lancaster , a coal owner and MP for Wigan in the 19th Century . Lancaster was educated at Eton College and the Royal Military College , Sandhurst . He passed out of Sandhurst in 1918 and was commissioned into the Royal Horse Guards ( ' Blues ' ) on 21 August that year , too late to see active service in the First World War . After the war he served with the Blues , attaining the rank of Captain on 20 October 1924 . He left the Army in 1931 . In 1924 Captain Lancaster inherited Kelmarsh Hall and the family mining interests , becoming a director of Bestwood Coal & Iron Co Ltd in Nottinghamshire . After he left the Army , Lancaster moved into coal industry management . In 1936 Bestwood merged with two other Nottinghamshire mining companies to form B . A . Collieries Ltd , of which Lancaster became chairman . He also farmed in Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire . In 1938 Lancaster was elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Fylde in a by - election , and sat in the House of Commons for Fylde and later Fylde South until 1970 . Second World War . Just before the outbreak of the Second World War , Lancaster was appointed as a Reserve officer to command the 9th Battalion the Sherwood Foresters , a duplicate Territorial Army unit being formed at Bulwell near Nottingham . The battalion was assigned to 139th Infantry Brigade of 46th Division , which like several other ' Second Line ' Territorial divisions went to join the British Expeditionary Force in France for training and labour duties in April 1940 . However , when the Germans attacked and broke through the following month , 46th Division was sent into action in the Battle of Dunkirk . On 29 May , 139 Bde joined ' Macforce ' holding the canal line near Carvin . As the ' pocket ' shrank towards Dunkirk , 46th Division was ordered inside the perimeter on 27 May . On 29 May , 9th Foresters were sent to reinforce the garrison at the fortified town of Bergues , 9 km south of Dunkirk . The Germans were unable to enter Bergues until 2 June , and 9th Foresters under Lancaster was one of the last units to leave Dunkirk and be evacuated from France . 9th Foresters left 46th Division in December 1940 , and shortly afterwards became the lorried infantry element of 1st Support Group in 1st Armoured Division . However , on 1 November 1941 , Lancaster ' s battalion was converted to the armoured car role as 112th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps . Lieutenant - Colonel Lancaster remained in command during this period before serving for a while in Guards Armoured Division and then returning to the House of Commons , when he was granted the Honorary rank of Colonel in the Royal Armoured Corps . Mining and politics . Lancaster had maintained his coal industry links while serving in the army : in 1943 he was instrumental in a mission being sent to the United States to prepare for American power loading machinery being introduced into British mines . When the Attlee Government nationalised the British coal industry in 1947 , Lancaster " ' gave all his support to the National Coal Board . . . and did his best to bring what he felt was much - needed drive and decisiveness to its cumbersome and slow - moving organization ' . " In 1948 he published a pamphlet on the organisation of the National Coal Board and in 1951 in association with former board members Sir Charles Reid and Sir Eric Young he wrote another pamphlet on " Structure and Control of the Coal Industry " . He was also a member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Nationalised Industries and of an inquiry into the activities of the Bank of England , set up in 1969 . Marriage . In 1948 Lancaster married Nancy Keene Perkins ( 1897 – 1994 ) , an American interior designer and gardener whose previous ( second ) husband had been Ronald Tree , MP for Harborough . From 1927 to 1933 Perkins and Tree had leased Kelmarsh Hall from Lancaster , when she had decorated the Great Hall and introduced Chinese wallpaper , still a feature of the house today . Claude and Nancy Lancaster divorced in 1953 . She went on to be a leader in the English Country House design style and owner of Colefax & Farmer . When he died in 1977 his obituary in " The Times " ( London ) made no mention of her .