Emma Ingilby

Emma Clare Roebuck Ingilby, Lady Ingilby (née; Thompson) is a British aristocrat and businesswoman. Upon her marriage to Sir Thomas Colvin William Ingilby, 6th Baronet in 1984, she became the châtelaine of Ripley Castle, the seat of the Ingilby baronets. She co-owns and co-runs the estate alongside her husband, and opened the castle up to the public in the late 1980s.

Lady Ingilby is the daughter of Major Richard A. Thompson, a military officer, and Pamela Margaret Baker, a school teacher.^[1][2][3] Her parents met in Hong Kong, where her father was serving in the British Armed Forces, shortly after World War II.^[4] Her father's family are an old Quaker family of merchants from Yorkshire,^[5] and her grandparents were friends with the Terry and Rowntree families.^[6][4] She is a descendant of John Spicer, a Protestant martyr who was burnt at the stake in 1556 during the Marian persecutions and was listed in Foxe's Book of Martyrs.^[1]

She studied business at the University of Bristol.^[4] After finishing university, she worked as a personal assistant for a finance director.^[4]

Lady Ingilby co-owns and co-manages Ripley Castle, a 14th-century estate, with her husband.^[7][8] The castle, the Ingilby family home for over seven-hundred years, is in Ripley, North Yorkshire, near Harrogate.^[6][5] Shortly after they married, she and Sir Thomas decided to commercialize Ripley.^[4] The Harrogate Convention Centre had been built a few years before, and the Ingilbys opened up the castle for dinners and teas, and turned some of the estate's stables and outbuildings into shops, in order to pull in tourism from the convention centre.^[4][9] They gave commercial leases to an art gallery, a pub, cafés, a gin-tasting room, a small clothing boutique, and a florist in Ripley.^[4] Lady Ingilby originally cooked the meals for formal dinners and events at the castle, for sometimes up to a hundred guests.^[4] She once hosted Sophie, Countess of Wessex at the castle.^[6] She hosts weddings and other formal events at the castle, and opened a 25-room hotel, called the Boar's Head, in one of the estate's listed buildings.^[6] She also opened up the east wing of the castle as a conference and banqueting facility.^[6] When she began managing the estate, she employed seventeen staff personnel and, by the 2000s, employed over one-hundred and twenty.^[2]

Lady Ingilby grows coffee, palms, bananas, oranges, cacti, and orchids in Ripley's gardens.^[4] In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, she had to dismiss her gardening staff, and had to manage the 15 acres of gardens, and the village flowers, on her own.^[4]

In February 2021, she was interviewed by Emma Manners, Duchess of Rutland for the podcast Duchess, where she talked about her role at Ripley Castle.^[4]

In June 2024, it was announced that the castle and estate were to be put on the market.^[10]

She met Sir Thomas Colvin William Ingilby, 6th Baronet of Ripley Castle, at a dinner party when she was eighteen years old.^[4][2] They married on 25 December 1984.^[3] Upon her marriage to Sir Thomas, she gained the title Lady Ingilby. She and her husband have five children:^[6]

• James William Francis Ingilby (born 15 June 1985)
• Joslan Richard Ryland Ingilby (born 7 October 1986)
• Eleanor Jane Pamela Ingilby (born 14 February 1989)
• Jack Henry Thomas Ingilby (born 10 February 1990)
• Richard Joseph Frederick Ingilby (born 9 December 1994)

Lady Ingilby is a member at York Racecourse.^[5] She serves as patron of Candlelighters, a foundation in Yorkshire that supports families with children battling cancer.^[11]