The Founders

By Dave Jenks, Society Archivist

(Edited extracts from an article, which appeared in Devon Birds Vol. 51 No.3 October 1998.)

Ernest Satow Allen (1862-1929)

Born in Stoke Newington towards the end of 1862, Allen was the fourth son of a London stockbroker. The family moved to Chislehurst, Kent around 1887, and from an obituary in the RSPB’s Bird Notes of Spring 1929 it is known Ernest Allen continued to live in Chislehurst for forty years. A severe attack of typhoid fever prevented him from going on to Oxford and he eventually settled in partnership with his father as a stockbroker. From about 1920 onwards he began to live during the winter months in Sidmouth because of his health, where he became known for his musical talents as well as his illustrated lectures on birds. Judging from various obituaries and even correspondence in The Times the Society lost a very able founding father when Ernest Allen died suddenly in Sidmouth on 3rd January 1929. He was buried in Golders Green, London. The other ten men who met with Ernest Allen to form the DBWPS are now dealt with in alphabetical order.

Dr Martin Ashley (c1875-1943)

Dr Ashley took the chair for the first general meeting of the Society in February 1929. At the time of the inaugural meeting he had retired from the medical profession and was living at Staverton, near Totnes. He was a keen and enthusiastic recorder of the bird-life of the Dart. Apart from his medical career, nothing more is known of Dr Ashley and although he remained a DBWPS member until his death, it appears he chose not to take any administrative role in Society affairs after its formation.

Arthur Henry Machell Cox (1870-1947)

Born in Yorkshire, Machell Cox moved to the southwest around 1902 as a teacher and by 1909 had become headmaster at Mount House Preparatory School in Plymouth. His bird notebooks and diaries survive, being in the possession of the Alexander Library at Oxford and they point to a keen and meticulous recorder and dedicated bird watcher. At the time of the inaugural meeting he had retired from teaching and was living in Yelverton. He was quite heavily involved in the early days of the Society, but probably through the influence of his friend Lt Col B H Ryves, founder of the Cornwall Bird Watching and Preservation Society, transferred his allegiance to that Society in 1931. For a time during the war, Machell Cox resided at Yealmpton, but at the time of his death he was living in the Quantocks.

Douglas Gordon (1888-1970)

Born in Knowlton, Quebec, of Scottish and Westcountry descent, Gordon came to Mid Devon around 1914 and lived in Sticklepath, a small village near Okehampton, for some fifty years. He was an author by profession as well as a journalist and broadcaster and wrote with authority on a number of subjects, particularly concerning Dartmoor. He later added ‘St Leger’ (his wife’s name) to his own, becoming better known for his many books on Devonshire life writing as D St Leger-Gordon. His extensive bibliography includes the volume Dartmoor from the famous ‘New Naturalist’ series. A permanent memorial stone inscribed simply, ‘Chronicler of Dartmoor and Lover of Nature’ can be found at Sticklepath.

Ernest William Hendy (1873-1950)

Born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, Hendy had early Devon connections, having been educated at Blundells before going on to Balliol to read law. He practised as a solicitor in Manchester and on his retirement in 1923 moved to West Somerset where he began his serious studies of the local flora and fauna. He was very concerned with bird protection, a fact reflected in his life-long active association with the DBWPS. He wrote a number of books on birds and of his beloved Exmoor. He was extremely interested in migration and organised a number of county-wide migration watches, addressing a meeting of the Society in 1932 with “Bird Migration in the West” He served on the Editorial Committee continually from 1932 and as Vice-President from 1946 to his death.

Dr Richard Hingston

Little is known of Dr Hingston, although it is thought that at the time of the meeting he had retired from medicine and was living in Paignton. His early resignation from the Society through ill health, tendered in September 1930, was later withdrawn, but there is no further mention of him in DBWPS literature and what became of him is unknown.

Henry George Hurrell (1901-1981)

The first joint Hon Secretary of the DBWPS, and, possibly, one of only two founder members to have been born in the county, Hurrell was destined to became one of the most prominent of the original eleven men through his writing, his film-making and, later, his radio broadcasts and television appearances. The length of his active service to the Society is second to none. He was awarded an MBE in 1974 for his services to the community and for nature conservation. Certainly his contribution to our knowledge of local natural history was immense and his lifetime accomplishments are too numerous to list here. His enthusiasm for the work of the DBWPS never wavered and continued until his death.

Leslie Major (1901-1971)

At the time of the inaugural meeting Major was living in Lifton, where his father owned and ran the Lifton Milling Company. By this stage of his life he had developed his interests in Natural History which he was later put to good use in a series of daily nature notes for the Western Morning News, besides supplying much information from the adjacent area of Dartmoor for the early Bird Reports of the Society. On the death of his father in 1947, Leslie Major was able to expand his interests and in the early 50s he moved to Polapit Tamar, a 120-acre estate near Launceston. After his move to Cornwall he devoted his life to horticulture, becoming a nationally known daffodil collector and breeder. Despite his many varied interests and personal problems, he retained his allegiance to the DBWPS, remaining a member throughout his life. He was proud of his participation in the formation of the Society and once remarked to Hurrell, “We did a good job that day didn’t we?”

Walter Walmesley White (1877-1970)

Born in Leicester, ‘WWW’ as he was widely known, lived his formative years in the Lake District before taking a degree at Keble College, Oxford. On his marriage in 1914 he moved to Knowle, just west of Budleigh Salterton, settling there for the rest of a long life. He was a keen observer of birds in his home district and kept a diary for many years. His last diary, which was gifted to the DBWPS in 2001 and published in 2005, now resides in the Fairlynch Museum at Budleigh Salterton. The diary paints a vivid picture of the bird life of his home area and his meticulous recording was later to serve him well when writing his book, Bird Life in Devon, published in 1931. His association with the DBWPS was, for unknown reasons, rather short lived. He served as joint Editor for just the first four Annual Reports before resigning his post in January 1932, and from the Society four years later. Contrary to earlier reports, which gave his life span as 1875-1966, we now know from a note added to the diary by his godson, that he passed away in 1970. He was cremated at Torquay but there is no permanent memorial.

Dr Ernest Ward (1877-1945)

The first President of the DBWPS, Dr Ward was also President of the Teign Naturalists Field Club from 1928 to 1933 and as a knowledgeable naturalist, led a number of field meetings of that club. He was born in Yorkshire, the third son of Lady and Sir John Ward, one time Lord Mayor of Leeds. Nothing is known of his early days but he did go to Cambridge where he attended Clare College gaining a degree in Natural Science and his MD in 1907. He had a distinguished medical career and wrote two books on medical matters. During his time as President of the DBWPS Dr Ward earned the admiration and respect of all members for his enthusiasm and interest in Society affairs.

Vero Copner Wynne-Edwards (1906-1997)

Another son of Yorkshire, Wynne-Edwards’ life-long interest in Natural History began in his boyhood days in the Dales. He was educated at Rugby School where his lecturers included Julian Huxley and Ernest Shackleton prior to his last Antarctic expedition. Knowing that Huxley would be his tutor, he moved on to New College, Oxford, to read Zoology, graduating with first-class honours in 1927. His work for the DBWPS was cut short when he moved to Canada in 1930 to take up a post at McGill University in Ottawa, although he continued to keep in touch with the Society for a while. His interest in seabird ecology began on his first transatlantic voyage, and after many subsequent voyages he published a paper on the subject through the Boston Natural History Society which won him the Society’s Walker Prize. Whilst at McGill a study of plant survival in the Rockies won him a second Walker Prize and Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada. He returned to the UK on the last transatlantic convoy of the war and moved to Scotland in 1946 to take the position of Regius Professor of Natural History at Aberdeen University, a post he held until his retirement in 1974. His fame in Scotland extended to his exploits as a cross-country skier and hill walker and at the age of 62 he broke the record for traversing the six tops of the Cairngorms. Even at the age of 76, after major abdominal surgery, he was on his skis in Glen Tanar. He died in Banchory, Kincardineshire on 5th January 1997, his ashes scattered on Morven, where he had last skied at the age of 80, the last of the founding fathers of the DBWPS.