John Dodson, 3rd Baron Monk Bretton


John Charles Dodson, 3rd Baron Monk Bretton DL is an agriculturist, Sussex landowner, UK peer of the realm, and long–serving member of the House of Lords.
John Dodson succeeded his father, John William Dodson, in 1933.
He was only nine years old. Educated at Westminster and New College, Oxford, he became a member of Brooks's in 1949. He married Zoe Scott in 1958, and has two sons.
Between 1966-68 Lord and Lady Monk Bretton had Raymond Erith re-model a Queen Anne house his great-grandfather, Sir John Dodson, had acquired near Barcombe from the family of Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Dodsons had hitherto largely just rented it out; Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas, for example, was a tenant circa 1920. The house, Shelley's Folly, Erith described as 'a little pavilion, on a knoll, built for the view'. Monk Bretton, having consequently sold another larger and newer nearby house, lived there until moving to Switzerland in 2004.
He has been a Deputy Lieutenant for East Sussex since 1983, and a stalwart of the South of England Agricultural Society show, at Ardingly, since its foundation in 1967.
Following expulsion from the House of Lords in 1999 he moved to the Lake Geneva northern shore.

Monk Bretton in the Lords

Lord Monk Bretton first sat in Parliament at the age of 23 on 27 January 1948. He was greeted by the Second Reading of the Parliament Act 1949. Over 51 years later the by then 75-year-old peer was excluded by the House of Lords Act 1999.
His maiden speech was made 18 March 1948 in Lord Dowding's Notice debate on the Slaughter of Animals.
At 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday 9 November 1999 Lord Grantchester rose to ask Her Majesty's Government how their proposals for the milk industry and in particular for the supply of raw milk will affect the rural economy, in the ensuing debate Monk Bretton made his valediction.
He concluded his 13-minute speech thus: