Raymond Evershed, 1st Baron Evershed


Francis Raymond Evershed, 1st Baron Evershed, PC was a British judge who served as Master of the Rolls, and subsequently became a Law Lord.

Background and education

Evershed was the son of Frank Evershed, a brewer and sportsman, and his wife Florence Helen, daughter of Thomas Lowe. He was educated at Clifton College and Balliol College, Oxford. During the First World War he was a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. In January 1923, he was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn. He then practiced at the Chancery bar.

Legal and judicial career

Evershed was made a K.C. in 1933 and a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn in 1938. He became a High Court Judge in 1944 when he was knighted, and Lord Justice of Appeal in 1947, when he was also made a Privy Counsellor. Between 1949 and 1962, he was Master of the Rolls and served as the U.K. Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1950.
He was raised to the peerage as Baron Evershed, of Stapenhill in the County of Derby, on 20 January 1956. In 1962, he was made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, and was succeeded as Master of the Rolls by Lord Denning.

Personal life

Lord Evershed married Cecily Elizabeth Joan, daughter of Sir Charles Alan Bennett, in 1928. The title became extinct on his death in October 1966, aged 67.