Author: Liz Nicholls

Liz Nicholls

Buckinghamshire, Community & Charity, Round and About

Peter Henry tells us more about Chesham Bois Tennis Club’s oldest member Roy Thorn who is still smiling at 100

As a member of Chesham Bois Lawn Tennis and Squash Club for some 30 years I have known and played tennis with Roy for a considerable time. On his 90th Birthday, when he was still playing twice a week, I had the opportunity to interview about his life and he turned out to be quite a character. Now that he reached 100 it provides the opportunity to share some of his stories with the world.

Roy was born on 7th August 1924 in Chesham where apart from his time in the RAF and 10 years working in London, he has spent all his life in the area. He was married to Mary, a talented painter and Sculptor, for 46 years until her death in 1997, with whom he had 3 children, Robin, Jane and Timothy, four grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren. His career was in the legal profession as first a solicitor’s clerk and later as a Legal Executive when he was a founder member of the Institute of Legal Executives. Outside work he has been a keen sportsman all his life with tennis and badminton as his two games. He founded Chiltern Badminton Club and has been a member of Chesham Bois LT&SC for 76 years.

Roy has always been a keen photographer and during the early part of the war Roy delighted in taking illicit photographs of the military vehicles and troop movements either from the offices of Blaser Mills which overlooked the Broadway or by concealing his camera under his coat on the Avenue in Lowndes Park where British Army vehicles were concealed under the line of trees.

One night in 1941, during the period of the London Blitz, bombs were dropped on a field on the outskirts of Chesham. Roy went out early the next morning and picked up an unexploded incendiary bomb sticking out of the ground taking it home on his bike concealed in his gauntlet gloves much to his mother’s horror. On returning home for lunch the bomb had gone, taken away by the police. Roy went round to the Police Station in a high dudgeon, had a heated but failed argument with the sergeant to get ‘his’ bomb back.

In 1943 Roy joined the RAF and was then sent on an aviation course in Leicester where he flew Tiger Moths learning all the tricks of the trade including Acrobatics, Night Flying, Navigation and Forced Landings. As part of this course, they were required to travel an 80-mile route with an instructor and then retrace the route flying solo the next day. The course took them north from Leicester but Roy, who as shown by his clandestine military photography was always keen to take a risk, worked out that if he fiddled his log he could fly to Chesham and back. This he did successfully with the only difficulty being when he encountered 3 Bovingdon based US Flying Fortresses and was forced to climb so they couldn’t see his registration and possibly report his presence in the wrong part of the country!

During his time in the RAF, he was working alongside the now famous actor Robert Hardy. Robert asked Roy to take some photographs and, being enamoured of the Laurence Olivier 1944 film of Henry V, came to the shoot with full costume including armour, hired for the occasion.

Roy left the RAF in 1946 and returned to his old firm of Blaser Mills and then spent 10 years working in similar roles in London from the late 1950s but returned to Chesham and joined the solicitors Iliffes (now– IBB).

With two friends, who both safely survived the war, he founded Chiltern Badminton Club in which he was involved for the next 25 years including the roles of secretary and chairman. Roy joined Chesham Bois LT&SC in 1948, was made an honorary member on the Club’s Centenary in 2008 plating until he was 97.

Three further facts that demonstrate his character are; that he rode a motorbike until he was 87, and at the age of 96 he also managed to climb through a very small window that was a good 6ft above the ground, after he’d locked himself out of the house upon return from his granddaughter’s wedding. Having achieved entry with the aid of a ladder he then took it outside, locked himself out again, and had to repeat the whole process!

Roy lived independently in Amersham until February this year when he moved to The Willow Care Home in Chesham where he continues to make the most of life.

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