Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

60 Chapter Five: The Great War – the end of Robinson’s country house cricket The Great War Given that Robinson was past the age for military service and had only daughters, the onset of the Great War had no impact on his immediate family resident at Old Buckenham. However, his future sons-in-law, ‘Jim Jack’ Evans and John Graham Brockbank, and his nephew, Lionel Frederick Robinson, all served in the military and came through physically unscathed. Captain Evans, whose wedding to Viola took place at the Guards’ Chapel in London’s Wellington Barracks in 1916, was decorated with the Military Cross whilst serving with the Welsh Guards and was promoted to Major. Brockbank, who married ‘Queenie’ at Old Buckenham church in 1917, served in the Machine Gun Corps where he attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Serving with great distinction in the navy, Lionel Frederick became a Lieutenant-Commander. The Stock Exchange was closed at the end of July 1914 but, as stated in chapter one, Lionel did not resume activity on any significant scale when it reopened in January 1915. He spent the war years relatively quietly on his estate at Old Buckenham, the local press having more important things on which to report than the doings of a distant, rural outpost. In his obituary, Lionel Robinson was described as being ‘Liberal and Imperialist in politics but .... not a frequenter of platforms’ 47 so, in hindsight, it is not surprising that the Norfolk press failed to record him as a maker of jingoistic speeches. As will be described below, he preferred to express his support for the Allied cause by reaching into his pocket. His daughters were sighted in January 1915 when they invited local schoolchildren to tea in one of their father’s larger buildings, the Foresters’ Hall, which had been decorated for the occasion, but Robinson himself disappeared from view until October of that year when the residents of the parish of Wilby, of which he was lord of the manor, objected to a rate made for the relief of their poor by the Assessment Committee of Wayland Union and the Overseers of the parish. He instructed his lawyer, both to appeal against the rate, and to request that this appeal be deferred as there had been inadequate notice to prepare a case. Soon afterwards, Robinson had need of his lawyers once more as he was taken to court by John Moon, a timber merchant who was seeking to recover £35 2s 6d for services rendered. The case was a complex one, dating back to 1914, but his barrister, Mr Claughton Scott, persuaded 47 Lionel was a member of the Reform Club in Pall Mall in central London, at one time the Liberal Party’s unofficial ‘headquarters’.