c1952: Tony Gummett – Cornwall House 1952
Tony writes: ‘It’s post-Christmas, members of the family have departed (leaving me to wash the sheets etc), the weather is cold, wet and miserable, so I thought I would occupy some of my time trying to sort out piles of papers etc that surround me in my so-called ‘office.’ In doing so found the attached photograph taken on the roof of Cornwall House (you can see the dome of the Imperial War Museum in the distance) circa 1952-3, and is of some of the ITW staff.
Of those whose names I can still remember are: in the front row centre Arthur Ryder, Director (Directors looked like Directors in those days, and you treated them with very great respect!) and Edmund Auty, Deputy Director. At the extreme right is William ‘Wet’ Taylor and on his left is Arthur . . . (an interesting CO member of the Transport staff in that having served in WW1 he first entered Cornwall House, so I understood, when it was a hospital). Among those in the second row are Eddie Truscott, Tony Gummett, Dave Reynolds and Tom Herridge.’
Reg adds: Some further investigation with a 1954 Staff List shows that the three Directing staff named joined HMSO in 1918-19, and that the tall bespectacled man in the back row was almost certainly Ralph Chisholm, who was the Principal Transport Officer having taken over the HEO post from Charles Bradshaw. More speculatively, the Arthur referred to could have been Arthur Read, who worked as CO in ITW and was born in 1891.
Tony also has in his possession a photograph of the HMSO Team at a CSCA Conference held in Douglas, Isle of Man, at the end of the 1950s. Among the group there feature Bob McRobbie, Paddy Epstein, Jim Martin, Vic Pratley, Terry Dickie, Maurice Savage, Bob Barnard, Doreen Roberts (Bristol), Tony Gummett, Rita Ryan (Manchester, later HEO Basildon), Geoff Ford, Margaret Brown (Edinburgh), Bob Foulds (Manchester, later RB3) and RG ‘Basil’ Radford. The Editor would be pleased to copy this photograph to anyone interested.
(Photo from Tony Gummett)
[Back] | 
