Background
Wellesley was the third son of Lord Arthur Wellesley (later 4th Duke of Wellington) and Lady Arthur Wellesley (later Duchess of Wellington, née Kathleen Bulkeley Williams).
Wellesley was the third son of Lord Arthur Wellesley (later 4th Duke of Wellington) and Lady Arthur Wellesley (later Duchess of Wellington, née Kathleen Bulkeley Williams).
He was educated at Eton.
Wellesley served as a diplomat in the Diplomatic Corps in 1908. He held the office of Third Secretary of the Diplomatic Service between 1910 and 1917, and the office of Second Secretary of the Diplomatic Service between 1917 and 1919. He was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1921, and as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1935, and was Surveyor of the King"s Works of Art 1936–1943.
He gained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1939 in the service of the Grenadier Guards.
He fought in the Second World War between 1939 and 1945. He served as Lord Lieutenant of the County of London between 1944 and 1949 and as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire between 1949 and 1960.
In 1951 he was made a Knight of the Garter. Working with Trenwith Wills, Wellesley also remodeled Castle Hill, Filleigh, in Devon.
Hinton Ampner in Hampshire.
And Biddick Hall in County Durham. Wellesley also designed the Faringdon Folly tower for Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners. Wellesley also built Portland House in Weymouth in 1935.
Wellesley was bisexual or homosexual, but married Dorothy Violet Ashton (21 August 1885 – 11 July 1956) on 30 April 1914.
The marriage was unhappy and they separated in 1922 but did not divorce. Her stepfather since 1899 was the 10th Earl of Scarbrough.
They had two children:
Valerian Wellesley, 8th Duke of Wellington, born 2 July 1915, died 31 December 2014
Lady Elizabeth Wellesley, born 26 December 1918
Dorothy "Dottie" Wellesley, a poet, left the family to become the lover of Vita Sackville-West, (who wrote her entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Wellesley was the maternal grandfather of the actor and musician Jeremy Clyde.
Among his architecture projects was the remodeling of the London home of Anglo-American member of Parliament Henry "Chips" Channon.