Cholmondeley was the eldest son of The 3rd Baron Delamere, whom he succeeded in 1931. His mother was Lady Florence Anne Cole, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who was the daughter of The 4th Earl of Enniskillen. Cholmondeley was an indirect descendant of Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain.
The Rt Honorary Popularly known (from 1931) as Tom Delamere, he owned the vast Soysambu Ranch in Kenya. In this period, the Cholmondeley family continued to own ancestral land and estates in Cheshire in the North of England. However, Lord Delamere lived, worked and invested most of his life in building modern Kenya.
In 1934, Tom Delamere moved his family into Vale Royal Abbey, only to be forced out in 1939 when His Majesty"s Government converted Vale Royal to serve as a sanatorium for soldiers of World World War World War II The Cholmondeleys were restored to possession of the abbey after the war, but by 1947 the house and grounds had been sold.
