BEAUTIFUL HOME NEAR OXFORD

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 8

BEAUTIFUL HOME NEAR OXFORD

Lord And Lady Norrie Have Many Interests

[From the London Correspondent of "The Press"]

LONDON, January 30. former Governor-General of New Zealand, Lord Norrie, and Lady Norrie are today living in a beautiful Queen Anne home overlooking the Berkshire Downs. “The Ham,” which is simply old English for “The Home,” is close to the centre of Wantage and midway between Oxford and Newbury, and beyond the building spreads Lord Norrie’s 65-acre farm and market-garden interlaced with flowing streams bearing such amusing names as the Thames and the Suez Canal.

Beef cattle (Friesians), chickens, and turkeys comprise Lord Norrie’s principal farming interests, but he has still a great love for and interest in racing horses. He is closely identified, too, with the activities of the Big Brother Movement and the Fairbridge Society. Moreover, last June he was installed Chancellor of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by the Queen during a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The Big Brother Movement, of which Lord Norrie is chairman, selects from many applicants a certain number of boys between 15 and 18 years for a life in New South Wales and other parts of Australia. On the organisation’s farm near Sydney these “little brothers,” as they are designated in- England, are placed in the care of the ‘‘big brothers.” It is a scheme of such interest and value that Lord Norrie would be very happy to hear of some similar organisation functioning in like manner in New Zealand. Lord Norrie is on the council of the Fairbridge Society, which takes its name from the founder, and this organisation functions in a rather similar manner though with families. “The Ham,” situated in one of the finest shooting districts in the United Kingdom with pheasant and partridge abounding, took Lord and Lady Norrie two years to find, but each is satisfied today that the waiting, and the inspection of something like 200 other properties were well worth while.

King Alfred This is King Alfred’s country, and Lord Norrie has supported the legend that the cakes were actually burnt on his property. Anyway, he likes to feel that they were, and the fact remains that Alfred was bom at Wantage in 849 A.D. Asser, his friend and chronicler, tells us that Alfred paid two visits to Rome and returned to Wantage to continue his studies.

The statute of Alfred the Great stands in the marketplace bearing this inscription:

The West Saxon King, born at Wantage A.D. 849 Alfred found learning dead And he restored it. Education neglected And be revived it. The laws powerless And he gave them force. The Church debased And he raised it. The land ravaged by a fearful enemy From which he delivered it. Alfred's name will live as long as mankind shall respect the past.

Lady Norrie, still closely associated with the Victoria League, is also President of the Wantage Hospital League of Friends and the local representative on the Soldiers. Sailors, and Airmen's Families’ Association.

Lord Norrie’s eldest daughter, the Hon. Rosemary Norrie, married Captain Humphrey Fitzßoy Newdegate, grandson of a former speaker of the British House of Commons. two years ago, and they have a son. His elder son, Captain the Hon. George Norrie, 11th Hussars (P.A.0.), was for a year A.D.C. to Air Marshal Sir Charles Elworthy, head of the British unified command in Aden. He returned recently to England to attend a course in tank technology at Bovington. The younger son. Lieutenant the Hon. Guy Norrie, is Assiatant-Adjutant with the

10th Royal Hussars, now sta tinned in Paderborn, Ger many.

By a coincidence, Lord Norrie himself during his military career was promoted from the 11th Hussars to command the 10th Hussars in India —the last fully-horsed regiment.

Younger Daughters The Hon, Sarah Norrie, who will be 19 in June, was a debutante last year. She is studying music at the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama, specialising in the piano with the aim one day of being a teacher. She plays a lot of tennis. The Hon. Annabel Norrie, now 16, is attending finishing school near Bath, but she will leave for a six-months’ stay in Fiance in May to learn the language. Lord Norrie is a senior steward of Windsor and often acts at Newbury. He has been a member of the National Hunt committee since 1937. He has two brood mares in Ireland, Zizette and Leoti in a, with Mrs Boyd Rochfort, Middleton Stud, Mullingar. Zizette, by Foxbridge out of Crucible tracing back to Desert Gold, the most famous mare in New Zealand, was brought back to England in foal to English time to Ruthless. but to Lord Norrie's infinite regret she slipped twins. However, she later produced a chestnut colt foal by Aureole which was sold as a foal at the Newmarket Sales to Mr E. P. Taylor, a Canadian of brewery fame. This colt, which is very

large and needs time, is now a three-year-old called Aurora Fox. He has run only

once in Canada, when he finished second in a field of 20 at Woodbine. Zizette, Lord Norrie told me today, is looking very well and proving a “wonderful mother." Her third foal, a two-year-old bred by Lord Norrie, is now in training with Mr G. Todd, at Manton. Double Z, as she is called, is a strong, black filly by Zarathrustra and closely resembles her famous sire who won many races from five furlongs to two miles and a half. Zizette has also an attractive Hugh Lupus yearling filly which is remaining in Ireland for the time being. Zizette is now in foal to Gilles De Retz, winner of the Two Thousand Guineas, and goes to Above Suspicion in 1962 and, it is hoped, to the Queen's Aureole again in 1963. The other brood mere, Leonina, was bought for

Lord Norrie by the 8.8. A. in 1957. She is by Royal Charger out of Windway by Fairway. She has one filly foal by Rapace, now belonging to Mr T. Vigors. Leonina is in foal to Preciptic and goes to Dionisio, at The Curragh, in March. Leonina, who won a mile nursery as a two-year-old, is full of quality and fine looks. Lord Norrie also owns In partnership a young mare at Newmarket. This is Golden Brown by Golden Cloud out of Burnt Sienna, who is in foal to Zimone and due to foal early in February. She then goes to Hook Money by the famous Australian horse Bernborough. Golden Brown was a good winner herself and was third in the Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot, end she has produced winners.

Keen Interest In Horses

Sudden Thought, another of Lord Norrie’s horses, is a three-year-old trained by F. Johnson Houghton at Blewbury. She won her first race as a two-year-old. She is by Pardal (winner of the Derby) out of Sudden Light by Precipitation and will be racing this season as a three-year-old. She is entered in the Oaks at Epsom but may not run.

Lord Norrie has no jumpers racing at the moment, but last year Barleycroft, as a six-year-old, won four hurdle races for him and Mr Guy Lawrence.

Lord Norrie still owns a mare in New Zealand called Sunfly by Midday Sun out of Blue Trout and has a half share with Mr Woolf Fisher in a Foxbridge mare, Timeteller, whose progeny Kalamira has recently won several races. A full yearling sister to Kalamira was sold on behalf of Lord Norrie and Mr Fisher at the Wellington Sales on January 24 last and made 1500 guineas. The interest Nord Norrie has in horses is reflected in his magnificent sporting paintings which provide one of the many entrancing interior features of “The Ham.” They are by such masters as George Stubbs, Ben Marshall, J. E. Ferneley, Henry Aiken, and J. F. Herring. Lord Norrie has just received an old coloured print of an English horse called Trentham which he intends to present to the Wellington Racing Club.

The nearest neighbour of Lord and Lady Norrie in this very lovely part of England is the distinguished poet. John Betjeman, and his wife Penelope, a daughter of the late Field-Marshal Lord Chetwode. Lord Norrie told me that he and Lady Norrie hoped one day to revisit New Zealand, where they spent five very happy years, to renew acquaintance with their many friends in that country. “People Are Free” “It is a wonderful thing to be in New Zealand where people' are free, and where one does not see policemen going around carrying guns, as they do in South Africa,” said Dr. H. B. Beresford, who has arrived in Palmerston North to take up an appointment at Palmerston North University College. Dr. Beresford, who is the new head of the college’s education department, has spent the last seven years in South Africa. He said he thought that more and more encroachment was being made into education generally, and to university work in particular, by political activities in South Africa.—(P.A.)

To Train in Suva.— The Administration of the Cook Islands has sent two nurses from Rarotonga Hospital to train under the New Zealand nurses' training course at the Central Nursing School, Suva, Fiji. Tfcey are the first nurse* tram the Cook Tsiinigs to train in Suva.