Lives in Cricket No 15 - Michael Falcon

in the training of young cricketers such as Bill Edrich. There was another advantage that life in North Burlingham had over Essex: it provided an excellent place in which someone who was a countryman at heart could raise his family. Falcon had one son, Michael Gascoigne Falcon, and four daughters, Mary, Sybil, Anne and Rachel. Unfortunately Mary, who was born in 1921 and whose godfather was family friend and England Test captain Frank Mann, suffered from Down’s Syndrome and died in 1948. Michael Gascoigne, and Sybil Edwards, who spent most of their childhood at Burlingham, retain happy memories of their upbringing and of their father’s life in rural Norfolk. His day would invariably start with a spell of bowling in his own home-made net – there had also been a net at his father’s home at Horstead House – followed by a run around the field in front of the house. He would don a pair of shorts for this run, which was not cancelled even for rain: in the event of damp weather there was a hat kept specifically for the purpose. Up until 1939 a cold bath followed, but this was replaced by a wash in a hip-bath under the pump near the kitchen-garden. Apparently he could be heard by the neighbouring farmer on the other side of the wall ‘a-shuddering’. Breakfast was relatively spartan, consisting of a bowl of porridge (with salt rather than sugar) which he would make himself and, when they were available, an orange. He had developed a taste for oranges when he 94 Elder Statesman: 1930-1939 The Falcon family lived here, at Burlingham House, North Burlingham, from 1931 to 1969.