An occasional series featuring Laleham’s past residents and visitors
Some recent world events have echoes in Lale-ham ‘residents’, past and current.
Emma Radu-canu’s wonderful US open tennis victory and Brit-ain’s great Olym-pic performances are reminders that Laleham has had its own tennis grand slam and Olympic champi-on. Major Josiah George Ritchie, pictured, (an unu-sual forename, not a military rank), 1870-1955, had a 30+ year tennis career which included reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals in 1919 aged 48, and he competing there until 1926. Amongst his 131 career titles, he was a five times singles winner of both the German and the Austrian championships. With eight appearances (4 wins, 4 losses) he also has the most final appearances at the Queen’s Club champion-ships, and is still their oldest winner, at 38.
Major Ritchie was a Wimbledon doubles win-ner in 1908 and 1910, and the losing singles finalist in 1909. He finished the 1908 London Olympics with a full set of medals for tennis: Singles Gold, Doubles Silver and Indoor Singles Bronze.
He lived on Thameside for many years.
Active British military involvement in Afghanistan far precedes the past 20 years. General Sir Frederick Richardson Maunsell R.E., K.C.B. was a veteran of the wars that consolidated British colonial rule over the Indian sub-continent: the Sikh Wars, the Indi-an Mutiny and the Afghan War of 1878-80, in which Maunsell was the Colonel commanding the Royal Engineers and was second in over-all command of one of the two divisions in-volved.
The Boreen, on Condor Road, was described as his country seat and in the 1911 census he lists himself as an ‘unemployed General Officer’. He must have considered that he still had some fight left in him at the age of 82. He was buried at Laleham with full military honours in 1916.
Many of you will have watched the Dunkirk Little Ships’ Veterans Cruise on 12 Septem-ber. I wonder if any of those on board the Ships noticed the Dunkirk and D-day veteran prominently moored at Dennett’s boatyard that day. RFC113 began life in 1938 as an Express Cruiser before being requisitioned for military use during WW2 as an aircraft crash rescue launch. Although her precise roles aren’t detailed, she took part in the Dunkirk operation and the less prominent evacuations at St. Malo, the Channel Islands (her wartime crew were entirely from Jersey) and other French ports that took place over the subse-quent weeks. In the D-day operation she served as a (probably unarmed) dispatch boat.
RFC113 is still moored at Dennett’s boatyard, opposite Beech Tree Lane, if you’d like to take a look across the river at a bit of history.
The stories, reminiscences and obituaries of many residents and visitors are more fully related in Laleham’s Heritage Collection.
Dominic O’Malley, curator.