Beaulieu: Memorial service planned for Fiona, Lady Montagu

For more than 40 years Fiona, Lady Montagu was a familiar figure at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, and the family's ancestral home, Palace House.

The service, which is open to her friends and associates, will be held at the Beaulieu Abbey Domus on October 13.

Described by The Tatler magazine as "fabulously eccentric", the lifelong Elvis Presley fan celebrated her 70th birthday by donning a white rhinestone-encrusted jumpsuit and dancing the night away.

The costume came out again when the museum took delivery of Presley’s final car – a 1977 Cadillac Seville.

Fiona, Lady Montagu, with her husband, Edward, Lord Montagu, who died in 2015 (Image: Newsquest.)

Fiona, who was 79, died peacefully at her London home in May after a short illness.

She left Beaulieu after her husband, Edward, Lord Montagu, described as the greatest aristocratic showman of his generation, died aged 88 on August 31 2015.

READ MORE: Tributes paid to Fiona, Lady Montagu, who has died in London aged 79

Born in what is now Zimbabwe in 1943, Fiona attended a finishing school in Switzerland before working as a film production assistant in the UK.

She married Edward at Lymington Register Office in 1974 following his divorce from his first wife, the late Belinda, Lady Montagu.

An escort to Princess Margaret in the early 1950s, Edward was dubbed "Britain’s most eligible bachelor" but was jailed after being found guilty of homosexuality, which was illegal at the time.

Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph in 2015, Fiona said: "The first thing he did when we started dating was to give me a book about the trial.

"I think part of the reason he married me was that I was non-judgmental."

Fiona, Lady Montagu with children from Beaulieu Village Primary School (Image: Newsquest.)

Following their wedding she became a champion of the Beaulieu-based Country Education Trust, raising large sums of money for the charity by staging Christmas fairs at Palace House.

READ MORE: Widow of Edward, Lord Montagu reveals why she is leaving Beaulieu

Fiona also had many non-Beaulieu roles.

She served as an international advisor to the World Centre of Compassion for Children, was a trustee of Vision-in-Action, and became a patron of the Relational Thinking Network.

She was also helped launch the Club of Budapest, an informal association of people involved in art, literature, and culture, and became its first global ambassador.

The memorial service will be followed by a reception at Palace House.

Her son, Jonathan, said: "We would like those in the local community who knew her to join us for this celebration of her life."