Herry's Archives

Litchfield Manor during the war. Herry's bedroom was on the near corner. The window was broken by a bomb just after he was born. Having completed his pupilage with Percy Bragg at Headbourne Worthy , Patrick was offered the Litchfield Estate by the then owner, Carey Druce (who lived in Switzerland as well as at The Mount, Whitchurch). He came there in 1938 and married Catherine Stephenson in 1940. She died in December 1941. Patrick married Annette Luxmoore nee Pugh (who was living with her mother, Lady Herbert and step-father, Sir Alfred Herbert, at the neighbouring estate of Dunley ) in 1944. Herry was born at Litchfield Manor in 1945 and christened at Litchfield Church that September. Herry's Christening at Litchfield September 1945. Annette (holding Herry), Patrick, Jane Lawford (Patrick's mother), Percy Bragg, Constance Travers (Herry's godmother), Gill Luxmoore  It was at Litchfield that Patrick became a fine horseman and shot. Charles Carey Druce g...

Bottom right: Elsa and her mother by the fire, both characteristically smoking. In the other photos - Ruth's stepdaughter Sara [from Ruth's photo album 1946] In 1963, between leaving school and going to university , Herry spent the winter in Engleberg where an old friend of the Pugh's, Frau Prof Hauthal (known as Tante Erica) and her daughter Elsa had a chalet called 'Haldengutli'. Members of the family who loved skiiing - particularly the Pughs and the Cassels (Francie - Sir Francis- and later his son Tim) - had spent the winter there since the 1930s. Griffith Pugh , who later played a crucial role in supporting Hilary and Tenzing on their successful conquest of Everest in 1953, learned to become an Olympic-level skiier there, ignoring his father's entreaties to return home to his medical studies. As Elsa and her mother got older, looking after up to 16 guests every day proved too much for them and one of the family or close friends used to send thei...

Notes for the Address at the Funeral of Patrick Lawford in Meonstoke Church in February 2002 Patrick Lawford was born on 23rd November 1914, the youngest of five children, to Capt Vincent Lawford (CMG, DSO, RN) and Jane Agnes nee Mapplebeck at Chorleywood in Hertfordshire. The Lawford family were mostly bankers and solicitors but his brothers Adrian and Denys followed their father into the Navy, while his other brother Valentine had a distinguished career in the diplomatic service and then became a noted author, art connoisseur and artist in New York. His sister Sylvia Findlater, who is 92, survives them all. It was doubtless the Navy’s loss but Patrick had one term at Dartmouth before deciding to go farming after he left Repton - where he was an outstanding long-distance runner - and was taken on as a pupil by Percy Bragg at Headbourne Worthy , just outside Winchester in Hampshire. There he spent a marvellous three years before being recommended to Carey Druce...

Fuff , Annette with Piers , Herry in the wheelbarrow at Danegate Summer 1949 . Photo by Horst Following Patrick's pupillage at Headbourne Worthy and his first management job at Litchfield , the family moved to Eridge in 1946 - first to Crown House and then to Danegate on the Marquess of Abergavenny's estate. Danegate was an imposing crenellated house overlooking Eridge Park and we had a most happy time there as it was a perfect place for children. Herry remembers to this day the taste of the Michaelmas daisies he tried to eat in the border and his mother remembers finding him half-way up a huge ladder trying to see the moon better! He also used to ride his tricycle (and later an orange tractor) in the house's wide corridors. Later, having learned to ride a bicycle, he used to bike down the long drive to play with the little girl who lived in the lodge. Piers was born there in 1947 and Fuff started school at St Ronan's the same year. The ...

Pen-y-Fan Herry had enjoyed the corps at Winchester and shortly after joining Millers , he joined the TA - 2.1 SAS which was then based at the Duke of York's Barracks on the King's Road. He trained at the barracks on Tuesday evenings and at weekends on 'the Fan' (Pen-y-Fan') in the Brecon Beacons and on the moors outside Newcastle. Training was pretty tough, and he remembers having to force a fellow recruit down off 'the Fan' while he wanted to lie down in the snow as he could go no further. And fording deep rivers in the dark with a full 'bergen' on his back and a rife was pretty nerve-wracking as falling would have meant a struggle to survive. We even had to cross the top of one the Elan Valley dams with the water flowing over our boots..... Elan Valley dam He took the selection course in 1970 and was  'Best Recruit'  in his year. Subsequently he went on a number of training courses, including taking parts of the SERE training course ...

Following St Ronan's , Herry went to Winchester from 1958 until 1964, in Phil's (Sergeant's) where Francis King was his housemaster. Although his father Patrick had been at Repton, his mother Annette's brothers were all at Winchester as was her father, and she had been at  St Swithun's . Although a distant relation, Herry didn't get on with King, partly because of his (Herry's) eclectic reading tastes (Maupassant, Zola, Iris Murdoch) of which King (a devout man) did not approve. King also ran an appalling kitchen, the taste of some foods remaining with Herry to this day.... Herry's mother probably contributed inadvertently to the reading problem by maintaining an account for him at Harringtons in Parchment St and encouraging him to buy any books he liked - a practice which he later continued with his own children. She also supplemented his food rations by maintaining an account at Cullen's, a rather smart grocers in Jewry St, not far from Bar...

Herry went to St Ronan's from 1953 until 1958. Fuff (known there as 'Lux') preceded him and Piers (known then as 'Scurry'), came in 1955. St Ronan's was a marvellously happy prep school in huge grounds outside Hawkhurst. Founded in 1883 in Worthing, it moved in 1946 to Tongswood House, which had been owned by the Gunther family (the makers of Oxo cubes; hence the oxo motif in the stonework). It was owned and run by WB 'Dick' Harris who was succeeded in 1957 by the Vassar-Smiths (Sir Richard and Lady Dawn) , who were friends of his parents, Sir Richard having been at Lancing with Fuff's father Arthur Luxmoore . Dick Harris, the retiring headmaster, used to amuse the boys by allowing them to put sweet papers in his enormously bushy eyebrows. In addition to huge playing fields, the school had a magnificent wood - 'Tongswood' - which contained a stream where we constructed clay water-slides and built 'hides', a sinister and enor...

The UK Club's 125th Anniversary Dinner at the Guildhall in January 1995. Click the photo for a surprisingly good enlargement, with most people clearly identifiable. Herry is at a table 7 o'clock from the centre Thomas R Miller & Son was founded by Thomas Robson Miller, a third generation German immigrant from Hanover whose family name was originally Reichmuller. TR Miller was born in Newcastle and became mayor of Morpeth and a shipowner as well as secretary to the North of England Hull Club before being invited down to London to run the UK P&I Club by the then managers, Lamplough & Co. In 1885 he took over their business and by the 1890's the UK Club was the largest such institution in the world. There is an excellent description of the early days of the firm and a photo of Thomas R Miller in 'Mutuality' - The Story of the UK P&I Club by Peter Young - on the internet. After graduating in 1967 Herry started work for Thomas Miller at the su...