West Buckland WI members visit Tone Dale House

On Friday 22nd April, 31 West Buckland WI members visited Tone Dale House, for a talk & tour - the first of its kind - possibly many more to come for groups/parties.  It was an honour to have these ladies see some local history - in exchange for some scrumptious….. home made cakes and biscuits... of course! The ladies had such a successful time they are looking for a return visit, to look in more detail at the 100’s of memorabilia items, photographs etc.

Huge thank to their President, Jean Morris (please see far below) for organising the trip.  Ben was also reminded of another connection to this particular WI group - his grandma Grizelda Fox, was the founding President - back in 1936.

Richard and Ben Fox provided the tour & talk and included details on:

Dr Wilson Fox was an eminent physician to Queen Victoria.  While living at Tone Dale he used to cross the mill stream bridge, (still in existence) from the gardens, walk the 300 yards along the edge of the stream, onto the railway line platform and flag down the train, by the purposeful wave of his hat and stick, to take him to Balmoral, to attend the Queen.

Skiing; In 1891 Thomas Fox (third generation) with his cousin Gerald Fox, were the first people to take the long Norwegian skis, today more commonly known as the downhill ski, to Grindelwald in Switzerland, in 1891.  This was the first time ‘downhill' skis had been seen anywhere in Switzerland.

Rugby; Frederick Hugh Fox (great grandson of Thomas Fox) played for Wellington, his county of Somerset, and finally country.  He obtained the summit of his rugby career with his international cap, fulfilling his ambition of captaining England in the match against Scotland and leading the team to victory at Edinburgh, in 1890.  They saw the many souvenirs; including the England cap and shirt can be seen at the house.

Banking; Thomas Fox started issuing his own bank notes in 1787, the banking business grew to having over 50 branches before it was absorbed into Lloyds in 1921.  It was the last competitor to the Bank of England, to print and issue it's own bank notes.  One of only 9 left in circulation can be seen at the house.

Finally they also saw the military uniform pattern books and were told about how in 1900, HRH King Edward VII, passed the khaki dyed, Fox Puttee, produced by Fox Bros. as the standard colour to be used by the British army. Henceforth, khaki became the standard colour for British army uniforms.

One eagle eyed lady, Janet Harvey even found pictures of relatives at one of Fox Brothers pantomime.