Allsopp succeeded as 6th Lord Hindlip on his father’s death in 1993. He remained chairman of Christie’s International until 2002 and was thereafter briefly deputy chairman of Agnew’s, the Bond Street specialist in Old Masters. He published, in 2016, An Auctioneer’s Lot: triumphs and disasters at Christie’s.
He married, in 1968, Fiona McGowan, an interior decorator and grand-daughter of the 1st Lord McGowan, an industrialist who co-founded ICI. Sharing an eye for houses with scope for improvement, the Allsopps moved home numerous times until they settled on a small estate at Inkpen in Berkshire.
But in 1999, having always wanted “a house with water”, they found a Dorset property with frontage to the River Lydden where they commissioned what Country Life called “a modern Georgian masterpiece” on the site of a 19th-century farmhouse, and created splendid formal gardens.
Charlie gave devoted care to Fiona through the long battle with cancer which ended her life in 2014; he is survived by their son and three daughters. The heir to the barony and baronetcy is Henry Allsopp, an art dealer born in 1973; their eldest daughter is the television presenter Kirstie Allsopp, who described her father as “a great auctioneer, the best of his generation, an artist, a gardener… a real star [who] worked hard, played hard and went further than anyone ever expected. He died at home… surrounded by love, flowers and photographs.”
Lord Hindlip, born August 5 1940, died June 5 2024
