With his flamboyant character and eccentric taste in clothes, the seventh Marquess of Bath was one of the most recognisable faces of the British aristocracy.

Tributes have been paid after it was confirmed that Lord Bath, the owner of Longleat House and its safari park estate, had died aged 87 after contracting Covid-19.

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The “gloriously” eccentric aristocrat, whose name was Alexander Thynn, died on Saturday after being admitted to the Royal United Hospital in Bath on 28 March.

In the years before his death, Lord Bath made regular appearances on the Animal Park television show about his estate and Kate Humble, one of its former presenters, said he would be missed.

‘Kind and fun’

“Everyone will describe him as eccentric – and he was, gloriously so – but he was also kind & fun – and we all need a bit of kindness & fun in our lives,” she wrote on Twitter.

Lord Bath, then Viscount Weymouth, was educated at Eton and Oxford, where he was president of the university’s infamous drinking society the Bullingdon Club.

He married Emma Gael in 1969 and had two children, but in a 2010 Guardian interview he also acknowledged that he had “an eight-year-old but I don’t see enough of her”.

Lord Bath’s colourful love life could not be ignored and, acording to several reports, he had decorated walls in his house with erotic murals.

He was known for calling his mistresses “wifelets”, a group so large that there were reportedly more than 70 altogether.

In 2011 two of his lovers hit the headlines after one was arrested following a fight with a rival.

Police were called to Lord Bath’s 18th-century Wiltshire estate in the middle of the night and were said to have found the two women rowing over Lord Bath’s affections.

The aristocrat is even said to have earned the nickname of the “loins of Longleat” thanks to his wide array of intimate liaisons.

“If we get on sexually, that’s good enough,” he is reported to have said when questioned on the issue in a 1967 BBC documentary. “It’s a trade-off: she gets the prestige and I get the pleasure.”

Larger than life

But it was not just the Marquess’s love life which caught people’s attention, with his unusual and often eye-catching schemes also attracting their fair share of column inches.

In 2001 he unveiled his very own version of Stonehenge on the Longleat estate, with nine of its 22 granite stones measuring more than 15ft.

And in 2013, Lord Bath caused a stir after his estate made plans – opposed by the National Trust – to run a cable car down the middle of Cheddar Gorge in the hope of boosting waning tourist revenues.

Such was the unique nature of Lord Bath’s lifestyle – which he often carried out in a wide range of colourful waistcoats – that he even inspired new fashion.

In 2013, designers Agi Mdumulla and Sam Cotton – who met while interning in the studio of the late Alexander McQueen – cited the octogenarian as among their inspiration for recent collections.

A spokesman for Longleat Safari Park said Lord Bath’s family wanted to express their “great appreciation” for the medical staff who cared for him.

“They would politely request a period of privacy to deal with their loss,” they added.