Civil Engineer.

Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt (1839-1907) [PLOT 36]

Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt was the son of Admiral Frederick Edward Vernon-Harcourt (1790–1883), and his wife, Marcia Delap née Tollemache (1802–1868).

He was educated at Windlesham House School, Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1861 with a first-class degree in mathematics and natural sciences. He received his training in engineering as a pupil of Sir John Hawkshaw. In 1870 he married Alice Brandreth, daughter of Lt. Col. Henry Rowland Brandreth FRS, by whom he had four children of which three survived him.

He specialised in canal and harbour engineering. He was a pioneer in the use of scale models to predict the impact of manmade structures in tidal waters, and was an active contributor to the Institution of Civil Engineers, and the author of several books on civil engineering.

His career included acting as resident engineer for an extension to the West India Docks, London under John Hawkshaw, during the 1860s; superintendent of works at Braye Harbour, and construction of a pier at Rosslare. After 1874 he acted as a consultant engineer, and in 1882 was appointed professor of civil engineering at University College London. He resigned in 1905.

Geologist and Palaeontologist.

(1839-1909) [PLOT 37]

Harry Govier Seeley was born on 18th February 1839 in London. At the age of two, Seeley was sent to live with pianoforte makers after his father and was declared bankrupt. In 1855 his uncle John Seeley paid to have him trained for the bar, but he abandoned legal studies, planning instead to become an actuary. He studied English and mathematics in the late 1850s at the Working Men’s College and became secretary to the college’s museum. Seeley supported himself by copying documents in the library of the British Museum, where he was encouraged to study geology.

In 1859 Seeley entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and was soon hired by Adam Sedgwick as an assistant in the Woodwardian Museum. He lectured, catalogued fossils, and began field studies on the geology of the Cambridge Greensand, and published important papers and two catalogues of pterodactyl fossils. His work was profoundly anti-evolutionary, and controversial. Three papers from 1866 to 1882 revived the widely dismissed theory of the vertebral origin of the skull and limbs. His division of dinosaurs into ‘bird-hipped’ and ‘lizard-hipped’ forms became the basis for most later classifications.

In 1872 Seeley married Eleanora Jane and moved to London, where he earned an income from literary work, private tuition, and lecturing; Eleanora assisted him, becoming a skilled cataloguer and natural-history artist. They raised four daughters, the eldest of whom, Maud, married Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum in 1894. In 1876 Seeley was appointed professor of geography and geology in Queen’s College, London, becoming dean five years later. He also became professor of geography and lecturer on geology at King’s College, and in 1896 he succeeded to the chair of geology and mineralogy.

Seeley advocated the expansion of opportunities in higher education, especially for women. He contributed regularly to the Educational Times and published several popular books, including Story of the Earth in Past Ages (1895) and Dragons of the Air (1901). Seeley died at his home at 3 Holland Park Court in Kensington on 8 January 1909.

Founder of Ockenden Venture for refugee children.

The Ockenden Venture was founded in 1951 by three local schoolteachers and took its name from founder Joyce Pearce’s family home ‘Ockenden’ in White Rose Lane, Woking. The Ockenden Venture became a registered charity on 24th February 1955, under the War Charities Act 1940, its objective being to receive young East European people from post-World War II displaced persons camps in Germany and ‘to provide for their maintenance, clothing, education, recreation, health and general welfare’.

The project had begun in 1951, when Joyce Pearce (1915- 1985) persuaded Woking District Council to help support a holiday for 17 displaced East European teenagers at her sixth form centre at Ockenden House, as part of the Festival of Britain. An ad hoc arrangement was subsequently made for two of the girls to stay in Woking when they had obtained visas to attend school in England. The plight of older non-German speaking children in the refugee camps, for whom the educational provision was inadequate, provided the stimulus for Joyce Pearce, her friend and teaching colleague Margaret Dixon (1907-2001) and her cousin Ruth Hicks (1900-1986), headmistress of Greenfield School, Woking, to found the Ockenden Venture. The project was initially a modest one based solely in Woking, but houses were soon acquired in Haslemere, and in 1958 Ockenden took over Donington Hall near Derby as a school for boys. After World Refugee Year was declared in 1959, government money and increased donations enabled Ockenden to open new houses across Britain, and a small administrative staff was established. Direct help to adults was begun with the founding of The Ockenden Venture Family Trust, prompted by government relaxation of immigration laws to allow handicapped immigrants to enter the UK.

The Trust was registered as a war charity on 16th Feb 1960 and worked for the admission of parents of children already in the UK under Ockenden Venture schemes. Chiefly prompted by Joyce Pearce’s desire to provide assistance to Tibetan refugees in India, in October 1962 the general council of the charity agreed to amend the constitution of the Ockenden Venture to state its object was ‘to receive displaced children and other children in need from any part of the world and to provide for their maintenance, clothing, education, recreation, health and general welfare’, to allow the possibility of help to non-European children. Initially most help took the form of donations towards existing orphanages and schools, and sponsorship schemes, but Ockenden’s first direct participation in overseas-based work also began during the 1960s, with projects in India, northern Africa, and later south east Asia. In 1971, Ockenden merged with refugee charity, Lifeline. The most dramatic expansion of the Ockenden Venture came with the government’s decision in 1979 to accept Vietnamese ‘Boat People’ (who had begun leaving south Vietnam in large numbers after the invasion of Saigon by Communist forces in 1975) into the UK. Ockenden, Save the Children and the British Council for Aid to Refugees were given responsibility for a third of the country each to arrange for reception and resettlement of incoming families (Ockenden covered Surrey, the Midlands, the North West, North East, North Wales, Gosport and the Portsmouth area of Hampshire. The Birmingham office was responsible for organising resettlement; support was provided through support group liaison officers and support groups from the local communities). The three agencies operated under the umbrella of the Joint Committee for Refugees from Vietnam (JCRV) which was established by the Home Secretary in October 1979 under the chairmanship of Sir Arthur Peterson. Ockenden opened 25 new centres in response to the crisis, and by the end of the government programme in 1982, found itself a changed organisation, with a large workforce in formal salaried employment where before the organisation had been principally voluntary or semi-voluntary. During the early 1980s, Ockenden continued to receive refugees and to add to its projects overseas.

The death in 1985 of Joyce Pearce, who had continued as the driving force in the charity for 30 years, prompted questioning of the future aims of Ockenden. Several years of dissension followed over the managerial structure and the ‘ethos’ of the organisation, which from being a small charity almost unique in its objects, now found itself one among many charities involved in refugee work. The burden of maintaining Ockenden’s UK refugee accommodation to modern standards became an increasing argument for concentrating effort on overseas projects. Houses were closed during the 1990s, until only Kilmore House, Camberley, a home for severely disabled Vietnamese orphans, remained in 2001.

In 1999, the Ockenden Venture became Ockenden International, and concentrated nearly all its work overseas, in Sudan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Pakistan, Iran and Uganda. Nowadays, Ockenden International operates purely as a funding agency, having transferred many of its programmes to local organisations.

Railway Engineer.

Dugald Drummond born 1st January 1840 was a Scottish steam locomotive engineer. He had a career with the North British Railway, LB&SCR, Caledonian Railway and London and South Western Railway. He was the older brother of the engineer Peter Drummond, who often followed Dugald’s ideas in his own work. He was a major locomotive designer and builder and many of his London and South Western Railway engines continued in main line service with the Southern Railway to enter British Railways service in 1947.

Writer.

Major General John Hay Beith, CBE born 17th April 1876 was a British schoolmaster and soldier, but he is best remembered as a novelist, playwright, essayist, and historian who wrote under the pen name Ian Hay. After reading Classics at Cambridge University, Beith became a schoolmaster

.