Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

99 The death of Lionel Robinson and the fate of his cricket ground When Gates finally managed to sell up in 1936 the new owner, Captain T.J.F.Sewell, 68 who was the headmaster of South Lodge Preparatory School in Lowestoft, converted the Hall at Old Buckenham into a boys’ school; this opened in January 1937 with a total of 32 boys. A portion of the Estate was put up for auction at the Royal Hotel, Norwich, in August 1937 with yet another Old Buckenham Hall catalogue being printed. The new Old Buckenham Hall School struggled through the war years but was beginning to flourish when, on 5 December 1952, a disastrous fire destroyed the grand house that Lionel had lavished so much of his wealth and pride upon. The school moved to Merton, near Watton, where fire struck again four years later, necessitating a further resettlement to its present home at Brettenham Hall in Suffolk. 69 Shortly after, Lionel’s rustic thatched pavilion was transported to Brettenham where it still exists and the thatcher who had first roofed the building in 1911 returned nearly 50 years on to repeat his handiwork. If Lionel Robinson’s brash manner and conspicuous spending habits prevented him from gaining acceptance from the landed gentry, the reports of his funeral indicate that ‘his’ villagers held him in great esteem. Everard Gates was also a ‘big spender’ but his behaviour did not win the approval of the locals. Far from it; Barry Wilson, writing as late as 1977 which was 40 years after Gates sold and left, states that Everard was still remembered in Old Buckenham for his wild parties, complete with ‘chorus girls’ (who were presumably not there to accompany Maurice Chevalier’s singing). To be fair to Gates, he was not always the unreconstructed sot so unfondly remembered at Old Buckenham. Not only did he attain the rank of major in the Second World War but he had a not unsuccessful career as a politician. In 1929, while still resident at the Hall, he had been adopted as the Conservative Party candidate for the constituency of Deptford. He finished a distant second in what was a safe seat for Labour but conducted himself sufficiently impressively that, 11 years later, he was chosen to contest the seat of Middleton and Prestwick. Gates obtained 32,036 votes, which represented a Hoxha-esque 98.7 per cent share of the total and remains the record for a parliamentary by-election in the UK. The other 418 voters chose to support a certain F Haslam, who was representing the British Union of Fascists (BUF); Sir Oswald Mosley tried to campaign for Haslam but required police protection to escape a furious mob. In the next few days the BUF was declared illegal and its leaders were interned. Gates’ bibulous past was clearly no hindrance to his acquiring a safe Conservative seat and may have been put down to youthful high spirits (he was still under 30 when he had to vacate Lionel’s Hall). He continued to sit in Parliament until standing down in 1951 and lived to the ripe old age of 81, his liver seemingly undamaged. 68 Captain Sewell was the father of Donald Sewell, who was to become headmaster of Old Buckenham School in turn, and whose opinion on the origin of the soil in Lionel’s pitches was given in chapter three. 69 The name of Old Buckenham Hall was retained, even after the relocation of the school.