Captain Arthur Granville Soames OBE (12 October 1886 – 6 July 1962) was a British Army officer in the Coldstream Guards and landowner.
He was born on 12 October 1886 in Wingerworth, Derbyshire, England.[1] He was the only son of Harold Soames (1855-1918), brewer, later of Gray Rigg, Lilliput, Dorset.
Soames's uncle, Harold's brother, Arthur Gilstrap Soames, owned Sheffield Park, but he and his wife had only one daughter, Sylvia Soames.[2] He later left Sheffield Park to Soames.[3]
Soames's mother was Katherine Mary (1851-1932), a daughter of George Hill.[4]
Soames was the brother of Olave St. Clair Baden-Powell (1889–1977), World Chief Guide.
On Christmas night 1918, his father, Harold Soames, committed suicide by walking into the sea at Lilliput, Poole, Dorset; his sister Auriol Edith Davidson also committed suicide, by throwing herself under a train at Chestnut, Hertfordshire on 5 April 1919.[2] She was survived by her three small daughters, aged five, three, and three months.[2]
Soames was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the Coldstream Guards on 16 August 1905, promoted to Lieutenant on 21 September 1907,[5] and served with the regiment during the First World War.[6]
In November 1926, Soames was appointed as Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, and was then living at Ashwell Manor, Tyler's Green, Penn, Buckinghamshire.[7] He was appointed again the following year, 1927.[8]
On 20 December 1913 in London Soames married to Hope Mary Woodbine-Parish (b. 2 Aug 1893 in Westminster), daughter of businessman Charles Woodbyne Parish, of Ennismore Gardens, Kensington. Together, they had two daughters and a son:
They divorced in 1934, and Arthur Soames remarried twice:
In 1934, Soames inherited the mansion and estate of Sheffield Park, Sussex, from his father's childless brother, Arthur Gilstrap Soames, who had purchased it in 1909,;[3] Soames sold the estate in 1953.[12] He also disposed of part of his library.[13]
He died in a London hospital on 6 July 1962 aged 75.[14]