Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

61 Judge Earley Wilmot to throw out the case. Robinson served as the High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1916-17 but, again, the press was understandably more interested in chronicling the details of the next Big Push on the Western Front than in listing the engagements of the holder of a ceremonial post. Among the events that Robinson did attend as holder of the office was a service at Norwich Cathedral in August 1916 in memory of those men who had fallen in the second year of the war; the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Leicester) and the Lord Mayor also attended, as did around 50 wounded soldiers who had returned from the front. In October 1916 Robinson sat alongside the judge on the bench at the County Assize held at the Shirehall; he was accompanied by the Under Sheriff (P.E.Hansell) and by the High Sheriff’s Chaplain (the vicar of Old Buckenham, Henry Anderson). It was reported merely that there were few cases to be heard. During the Great War it was not uncommon for public schoolboys to aid farmers with their harvest so that the absence of farm labourers, who were away serving in the armed forces, would not seriously interfere with the collection of the crops. At harvest time in 1917, Lionel arranged with the National Service Committee for a party of about 30 senior boys from Downside (a school near Bath) to spend three weeks on the Old Buckenham The Great War Lionel Robinson in ceremonial regalia as High Sheriff of Norfolk 1916.