Reginald McKenna
Reginald McKenna (6 July 1863 – 6 September 1943) was a British banker and Liberal politician. His first Cabinet post under Henry Campbell-Bannerman was as President of the Board of Education, after which he served as First Lord of the Admiralty. His most important roles were as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer during the premiership of H. H. Asquith. He was studious and meticulous, noted for his attention to detail, but also for being bureaucratic and partisan.[2][3]
Reginald McKenna
Constituency abolished
6 July 1863
Kensington, London[1]
6 September 1943 (aged 80)
London
Pamela Jekyll (d. 1943)
Background and education[edit]
Born in Kensington, London,[1] McKenna was the son of William Columban McKenna and his wife Emma, daughter of Charles Hanby.[1] Sir Joseph Neale McKenna was his uncle. McKenna was educated at King's College School and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.[4] At Cambridge he was a notable rower. In 1886, he was a member of the Trinity Hall Boat Club eight that won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta.[5] He rowed bow in the winning Cambridge boat in the 1887 Boat Race. Also in 1887 he was a member of the Trinity Hall coxless four that won the Stewards' Challenge Cup at Henley.
Family[edit]
McKenna was married in 1908 to Pamela Jekyll (who died November 1943), younger daughter of Sir Herbert Jekyll (brother of landscape gardener Gertrude Jekyll) and his wife Dame Agnes Jekyll, née Graham.[1] They had two sons – Michael (died 1931) and David, who married Lady Cecilia Elizabeth Keppel (12 April 1910 – 16 June 2003), a daughter of Walter Keppel, 9th Earl of Albemarle in 1934. McKenna was a talented financier, and a champion bridge player in his free time. In royal company at Balmoral McKenna played golf.[43]
Reginald McKenna died in London on 6 September 1943, and was buried at St Andrew's Church in Mells, Somerset. His wife died two months later, and is buried beside him. McKenna was a regular client of Sir Edwin Lutyens who designed the Midland Bank headquarters in Poultry, London, and several branches. Pamela McKenna was a high society hostess whose dinner parties charmed Asquith at their Lutyens-built townhouse, Mulberry House in Smith Square. Lutyens the unofficial imperial-government architect built several homes for McKenna, and the political classes, as well as his grave.[44] Lutyens was commissioned to build Mulberry House, 36 Smith Square in 1911,[45] followed by Park House in Mells Park, Somerset, built in 1925.[46] The owners of Mells Park were Sir John Horner and his wife Frances, née Graham, who was Agnes Jekyll's sister,[47] and they agreed to let the park to McKenna for a nominal rent, on the understanding that he would rebuild the house.[48] Lutyens built a final house for McKenna at Halnaker Park, in Halnaker, Sussex,[49] in 1938.[50] Lutyens designed the McKenna family tomb in St Andrew's Church, Mells, in 1932.[51]
His nephew Stephen McKenna was a popular novelist who published a biography of his uncle in 1948.