He was the eldest son of Thomas Farrer, 1st Baron Farrer and his first wife Frances Erskine. In 1892 Farrer married Evelyn Spring Rice, daughter of Honorary Charles Spring Rice, the son of Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon.
In 1903 he remarried to Evangeline Knox, daughter of Octavius Knox. He owned a mainly wooded smallholding with house, Abinger Hall in Abinger, Surrey, which was renamed at or before the early 1700s when bought by the Dowager Countess of Donegal. Its predecessor was demolished and rebuilt by Farrer"s father and is a non-listed home around a courtyard of its former wings and other houses.
Farrer was a long-term member of the board of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (a forerunner of the London Underground).
