Roland Kitson, 3rd Baron Airedale

Born in Leeds, Kitson's family had a long association with Yorkshire. His father and grandfather both served as Lord Mayor of Leeds. His father was MP for Colne Valley 1892–1907. Kitson was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge

As "the Hon. R. D. Kitson", he is recorded in April 1913 as working as a Leeds magistrate alongside Alderman Francis Martineau Lupton, whose first cousin (once removed) was Florence, Baroness Airedale, Kitson's sister-in-law.[1]

He served in the 1914–1918 war with the West Yorkshire Regiment winning a DSO[2] and the Military Cross.[3]

His grandfather James had founded Airedale Foundry in Hunslet in 1835. Under Roland's father, also James Kitson and uncle, Frederick Kitson, and known as Kitsons of Leeds, this business became the manufacturer of about 5,400 locomotives in its first century.

He worked for a time in the Airedale Foundry and in the Monk Bridge Iron and Steel Company works.

His directorships included:

• director and deputy chairman of Dorman Long.[4]
• director of the Bank of England 1923–1947
• director of Ford Motor Company Limited from its incorporation in 1928,
  he succeeded Lord Perry as chairman in 1948, until 1954
• director of North-Eastern Railway before its amalgamation
• director of London Assurance Corporation
• director of John Dickinson and Company Limited

He succeeded to the titles of 3rd Baron Airedale, of Gledhow, and 3rd Baronet on the death of his elder half-brother, 11 March 1944.[5]

He was living in the 1940s until his death in 1958 at Ufford Hall, Cambridgeshire.[6]

He married Sheila Grace, daughter of F E Vandeleur in 1913. They had a daughter and a son:

• Oliver James Vandeleur Kitson (1915–1996); Oliver assumed the additional name of Vandeleur by deed poll in 1935.

After the death of his first wife in 1935 he married Dorothy Christabel Rowland Pelly, widow of Capt H M Rowland, on 16 September 1937.

He died in London, aged 75.