LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

127 Hope you are installed at Hall Road, and your efforts have received the appreciation they deserve. Insole had mentioned Hall Road and this was a reference to Robbie’s new residence in London since August. Robbie had been deeply affected by the death of his father at the beginning of the year, not only because he would no longer be seeing him at his desk in the offices of the family business, but because Vivian had lived with the family in Hampshire for the past seven years. He and Robbie had spent many hours together working in the garden and grounds, as well as fishing side-by-side in the river which Vivian had stocked with young trout, going off to play the occasional game of cricket or to watch Charles or Richard in school and university matches. Robbie, now 57, decided it was time for the family to leave Froyle and move into a smaller, easier-to-manage home. Penelope and Charles were now both married and had their own homes. Richard had decided not to go on from Eton to university and had arranged to move to Australia in September to train as a journalist, so there was only Unity, still at school, who would need to move with them. They found the ideal new home at 2 Hall Gate, a small neo-Georgian terraced house in St John’s Wood with a view of Lord’s from the bedroom window. He was delighted with the change and, according to Kathleen, ‘he was in his element wandering about Lord’s, whether there was cricket or not, talking to the staff and the young pros, and attending all the committees, and in the evenings he would play real tennis at which, with his usual enthusiasm, he became very proficient.’ As an administrator he could be unpredictable according to John Warr: ‘I remember him as chairman of a Middlesex committee reading out an apology for his own absence. When he was chided about it he replied that he had turned up because he realised that he could not Chairman of England Selectors The England selectors meeting in the Robins ‘dining room’ in Hall Gate near Lord’s. Left to right; Alec Bedser, Willie Watson, Robbie (chairman), Doug Insole and Ted Dexter.