MP for East Grinstead.
from Wikipedia
Colonel Sir Ralph Stephenson Clarke,
KBE TD,
DL (17 August 1892 – 9 May 1970) was a British
Conservative Party politician who served as
Member of Parliament (MP) for
East Grinstead from 1936 to 1955.
He was elected to the
House of Commons at a by-election in July 1936, after East Grinstead's Conservative MP
Henry Cautley was ennobled as
Baron Cautley.[2] Clarke held the seat until he stood down at the
1955 general election.
He was appointed as a
Deputy Lieutenant of
West Sussex in 1932, and in the 1955
New Years Honours List, he was made a
Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), "for political and public services".
Family
Clarke was the son of Colonel Stephenson Clarke. He married Rebekah Mary Buxton, daughter of Gerald Buxton and Lucy Ethel Pease, on 15 December 1921, and they had three children.
The Stephenson Clarkes were the founders in 1730 of Stephenson Clarke Shipping, Britain's oldest shipping company. In 1892, Ralph Clarke's father purchased a 200-acre (0.81 km2) estate at Borde Hill, near Haywards Heath in West Sussex, and from about 1912 began collecting trees and shrubs began by financing plant-collecting expeditions to the Himalayas and China. Ralph Clarke took up residence there is 1949, after the death of his father, and opened the gardens to the public in 1965.