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The Earl of Radnor  died on August 11 aged 80 reports the Telegraph website.

He had many connections with Folkestone although he was the owner of Longford Castle in Wiltshire.

He was a knowledgeable custodian of an exceptional collection of Old Master paintings and a particularly judicious buyer of pictures, acquiring 75.

His family, the Bouveries, were Huguenots in the Spanish Netherlands.

The Bouverie family acquired considerable property around Folkestone. Politically they were liberal and independent, which sometimes earned them a degree of notoriety.

He was educated at Chafyn Grove, Salisbury and, during the war at Greenvale on Long Island. He then went on to Harrow and to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Agriculture. Thereafter he ran the diverse family businesses, greatly increasing his inheritance by his diligence and careful stewardship.

He created a farming operation which supplied Sainsbury's and other retail outlets and, though based in England, his businesses took him to Canada and Australia. When the Channel Tunnel was constructed, the family property at Folkestone rose considerably in value.

His elder son, Viscount Folkestone, born in 1955, succeeds to the earldom.