Our Founder

Biography of our founder

Lt-Col Thomas Hutchesson, MC

(Old Elizabethan 2509), 1879 – 1940, who served with great distinction in the Second Boer War and the First World War, but left no descendants, a fate incidentally shared by all six of his siblings.

Guernsey’s losses in World War I through death and injury were immense, and quite disproportionate for such a small community, as we are often reminded during these centenary years. This year and next, especially, many Guernsey families will be remembering relatives who lost their lives fighting with the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry in the battles at Cambrai and Les Rues Vertes in November 1917 and at Doulieu, April 1918.

Others who fought for king and country in that appalling conflict survived, and returned home, physically unscathed if mentally scarred, to piece together their lives. Such men, uncommemorated on rolls of honour and war memorials, may also, however, being childless, have nobody now left to remember them.

Thomas was a very enterprising character who showed outstanding initiative from an early age. He left Elizabeth College aged 14, and went to Normandy to complete his education at a College in Valognes. He was there only for one year, however, before being lured down under by the thought of making his fortune in the Western Australian gold rush. After five years of toil and unknown, but presumably more than adequate, returns, he found the outbreak of the Second Boer War provided him another opportunity to change direction. Enlisted in the Western Australian Mounted Infantry as a Private, he fought throughout the war, attracting the attention of General Sir John French, later First Earl of Ypres, a senior British commander, who appointed him his ‘galloper’. He earned many battle honours, and was mentioned twice in despatches.

Returning to Guernsey in 1902, Thomas joined the Royal Guernsey Militia (otherwise known as the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry/RGL1) as a Lieutenant, becoming Captain in 1904. In 1906 he inherited the Seigneurie Le Comte from his father (and his grandfather before him). His residence was now the spacious house and grounds of Les Touillets in the Castel. Before long, however, he had moved yet again, this time to Brazil, where he set up business as a rubber planter, staying there until 1910.

In 1913 he married Ada Wilde-Rice from Lancashire. Sadly Ada died on 26th January 1915 – perhaps as a mishap of childbirth, and on 14th February 1915, Thomas was appointed Captain (Temporary) in the Royal Irish Regiment. He went to France with the First Guernsey Service Contingent of Militia volunteers, now D Company of the 6th Battalion the Royal Irish Regiment, in December 1915, after 6 months training at Fermoy, Co. Cork, and in Aldershot. Initially, he was in command of the Machine Gun Detachment, and on 8th December 1916, he was promoted Temporary Major, and then soon acting as second in command of the 6th Battalion RIR.

In 1917 he was in command as Acting Lieutenant –Colonel of the 6th Battalion in the absence of the C. O. This was perhaps the opportunity Thomas had been waiting for. On 5th April 1917, he organised the battalion and successfully raided the German trenches, effecting the capture of 21 prisoners of the 4th Grenadier Regiment. These prisoners were reported subsequently to have given much useful information to their British interrogators. Thomas’s efforts in this exploit were duly rewarded in the New Year’s Honours of 1918 by the award of the Military Cross.

Although not a career soldier, his experience and skills as a commander were now fully recognised by the War Office, and in January 1918 he was transferred from the Royal Irish to the command of the 19th London Regiment, a post he held until December 1918. While on leave in London, he met and subsequently married Louise Holland at St Mary Abbot’s Church, Kensington.

Despite the Armistice of 11th November on the Western Front, however, the War Office had not yet finished exploiting Thomas’s abilities. In March 1919 he was put in command of the 15th Battalion the West Riding Regiment, and in July was moved to Dublin, to command the 52nd Battalion, the Welsh Regiment, where he stayed until their demobilisation, and his own release from active service on 16th March 1920.

It was on his return to Guernsey that he made his most significant contribution to the life of the island, with the foundation of the Guernsey Sporting Club to be a permanent memorial to the men who had died in combat, and the source of an aid fund to assist the families of those killed and injured. His energy and commitment galvanised the men who had served under him in this project and ensured the support of the then Lieutenant Governor and Bailiff in his aim to secure premises for the Club. His ambition was to provide a meeting place for those who had returned from the trenches, traumatised by war, and now bewildered by the challenges of day-to-day existence. Not only would they help the families of others who had been less fortunate, but also learn to deal with their own mental upheaval by talking in private to one another and by finding outlets for their accumulated stress in sporting activities.

Thomas’s work culminated in the purchase of Warwick House, the Grange, which was then officially opened by the Bailiff and Lieutenant Governor on 13th September 1920, after a service at St James, in which the men of the First Service Contingent who had been killed in action were commemorated. Warwick House has remained the home of the Club to this day, just as the Club has remained faithful to the expressed aims of its Founding President, Lt-Col Thomas Hutchesson, in supporting charities whose remit covers aid to members of the Armed Forces and their families, and assistance to young people in pursuing sporting activities.

It is ironic, therefore, that despite all his meritorious achievements, the Treasury pursued Thomas after the War for repayment of £90 14 shillings and 3 pence, which they claimed was the overpayment he had received for his war service. He died on New Year’s Day, 1940 in his 61st year, and is buried in the family tomb in Candie Cemetery. His widow, Louise, eventually left the island and lived on, increasingly forgotten in Guernsey until she died in Surrey in 1972 at the age of 88.

Club Archivist: Alan Cross