Famous Cricketers No 95 - P.A.Perrin

Much of this estate, valued at £20,510 in 1892, equivalent to £790,000 in 2006, comprised development which he had undertaken himself. The properties included Frederick Terrace and Percy Villas. Heath Brow and Margate College The Perrin family finances were good enough to send Percy, as a young boy, to Heath Brow, a preparatory school for about eighty boys which operated from 1874 until 1964 from a large house in the Hertfordshire village of Boxmoor, close to Hemel Hempstead. The house was extended at various times to provide a dormitory, gymnasium and classrooms, with cricket played on common land close by. By 1964 the village was surrounded by the expanded Hemel Hempstead New Town. The school was then merged with another school near Markyate, and its site redeveloped for housing. Percy was introduced to cricket at Heath Brow, where it was said he was already a batsman ‘out of the common order.’ In 1889 he was sent as a boarder to Margate College, a private school for about 200 boys in Kent, whose purpose was to give its students a ‘sound commercial education’. The school closed in 1940 when its buildings were requisitioned by the Government. There he was coached by John O’Connor who later played, mainly as an off-break bowler, in nine first-class games for Derbyshire in 1900, and in about twenty Minor Counties matches for Cambridgeshire. Perrin said O’Connor was an excellent coach, who taught him ‘to play with a straight bat.’ He was in the school’s first eleven for the seasons of 1891, 1892 and 1893, in each of those years playing about a dozen games against other similar schools in East Kent or local clubs. In his last season, still in the fifth form, he reached double figures in all but one of eleven matches, scoring a total of 452 runs. The school history records as a ‘memorable occasion’, presumably a house match, ‘his first century, when he was carried shoulder high from the field.’ He returned to the school from time to time to play for the Old Margatonians against the boys. Frederick Perrin Perrin had one sibling, an older brother, Frederick Samuel, who was ten when Percy was born. Frederick was also a keen cricketer who played a great deal of club cricket in North and East London, particularly for Tottenham Cricket Club. His Wisden obituary in 1910 says he would ‘probably have done very well had he chosen to play first-class cricket.’ In 1900, playing at Hornsey for Crouch End, he scored 247* in a first wicket partnership of 363, with the first 300 coming in 105 minutes. Frederick ran the Queen’s Hotel at Upton Park from 1887, at the age of 21, until 1889: this was a sizeable property with six ‘live-in’ staff recorded at the hotel in the 1891 Census. He later moved to the Tiger Tavern, a famous old City pub dating back to the fifteenth century, in Tower Hill, near the entrance to the Tower of London, where he was the licensee until he retired in 1903 at the age of 37. Much altered, the Tiger was demolished in 1965, and its site has been redeveloped twice since. Frederick Perrin died on 13 August 1909, at 18 Woodberry Down, Finsbury Park, a large house long since demolished. He was 43: the death certificate identifies him as a retired licensed victualler and gives ulcerative colitis as the cause of his death. Percy Perrin is identified as the informant and the certificate adds that he was present at the death. Frederick’s businesses were evidently highly successful for the gross value of his estate was £72,100, about £2.5 million at 2006 prices. In his will, he left Percy an annuity of £500 a year, worth £18,000 a year in 2006. 5