Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

Percy , the second eldest brother, was born in 1849. He was at Uppingham from April 1862 to October 1866, but was the only one of the brothers not to play in the cricket eleven. He qualified as a solicitor and in 1876 became a partner in the family firm, which he took over after his father’s death. He married Frances Mary Richards in 1878 and they had nine children. Philip was born in 1853 and attended Uppingham from April 1865 to October 1870. He was the only one of the four brothers to play in the Uppingham football fifteen, 11 as well as the cricket eleven, although Bunny did later play soccer, tennis and golf. Philip was drowned at Sonning, near Henley, on 23 March 1871, aged only 18, in an incident which would have profoundly affected Bunny, who was fourteen at the time. A pupil of Messrs Maurice and Royds, surgeons of Reading, Philip went out boating on the Thames with two fellow students. The strength of the current drew his out-rigger boat over a weir, and his friend’s canoe capsized as he tried to rescue Philip. ‘Mr Lucas could swim but little, and Mr Armstrong gallantly endangered his own life in unavailing attempts to save him.’ At the inquest two days later, Philip was described as ‘a fine young man’ and his father, understandably, was ‘greatly distressed.’ In June the Royal Humane Society bestowed their bronze medal on George Armstrong for his ‘courageous efforts.’ 12 * * * * * William Orton Salmon’s widow, Elizabeth, had moved to 22 Chesham Place by 1841, and died in 1849. Orton Lucas and his family seem to have used Chesham Place as a town house and stayed on after she died. They remained there until the mid-1860s, when a sign of changing times was that one of the neighbouring houses was taken over by the Russian Embassy. In the early 1850s they also briefly had a home in Norfolk, Old Hall at Ingham, ‘a scattered but pleasant village with several nice houses occupied by the owners’, of whom Orton Lucas was one. By 1855, Orton and Mary Lucas and their family had moved to Loseberry, at Claygate near Esher. 13 Surrey had since Tudor times been attractive to anyone wanting to combine business in London with the pleasures of country life. Claygate is close to the Portsmouth road and in the late eighteenth century the building of Claremont Palace brought rich families The Lucas family 13 11 In Philip’s time Uppingham played their own fifteen-a-side version of football, but in 1889 the school adopted the Rugby code. 12 Liverpool Mercury , 27 March 1871; Jackson’s Oxford Journal , 1 April 1871; Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 18 June 1871. Sourced online at nineteenth-century British Library newspapers, October 2009. 13 Post Office, Essex, Hertfordshire Kent, Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex directory , 1855. Information about Claygate and Loseberry from: Malcolm W.H.Peebles, The Claygate Book , Blackmore Press, 1983; monographs written in 2007 and 2008 by Howard Mallinson and accessed at May 2009; personal correspondence with Mr Mallinson.