Windsor’s Court

Random recollections of Windsor in the 1950s

Published in Windlesora 20 (2003)

© WLHG

On qualification in 1954 the quirk of circumstance brought employment as an assistant solicitor specialising in advocacy with Messrs Lovegrove and Durant, housed then, as now, in the handsome 18th century buildings in Park Street formerly owned and occupied in the 19th century by the firm’s then senior partner Sir George Long, sometime both Mayor and Town Clerk.

In the 1950s practically all advocacy in the Windsor area was conducted as it had been for fifty years, in the Courthouse in St Leonard’s Road which, since opening in 1907, housed all the local courts as well as the police station and the adjacent fire station on the corner of St Mark’s Road.

First and foremost the Courthouse contained Windsor Magistrates’ Court, which sat on Mondays and Thursdays. At the end of 1954 when I conducted my first case — a lady charged with shoplifting in Lower Peascod Street — the members of the Bench included Miss Gwladys Hanbury-Williams. A daughter of Sir John Hanbury Williams, sometime Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, she was a great character and twice Mayor of Windsor. She lived within the Castle and after her death at a great age her ashes were interred at St George’s Chapel. The Chairman of the Bench in those days was Major General Sir Edmund Hakewill-Smith. Born in South Africa, he served in the Royal Scots Fusiliers with considerable distinction throughout the Great War, for some months with Winston Churchill, being twice wounded. From 1943-46 he commanded the 52nd Lowland Division. He became Governor of the Military Knights of Windsor in 1951 and Deputy Constable and Governor of Windsor Castle in 1964. Sir Edmund lived in Queen Mary Tower and presented a fiery facade to the world, not least to one young advocate appearing before him. Lady Mary Crichton, wife of Sir George Crichton, both of whom lived for many years at Queen’s Acre in King’s Road, was another formidable figure on the Bench of which she was Deputy Chairman. Amongst their colleagues were Mr Gaymer-Jones, a local surgeon and Dr Gillespie-Hill, a popular local GP. Alderman Vidler, senior partner in a Sheet Street Dental practice, was another charismatic member of the Bench in the 1950s.

The Clerk to the Windsor Bench was Mr Ian Hezlett, large in stature and rubicund of countenance with a propensity for nodding off after lunch in full view of an indulgent court which seemed to accept this amiable eccentricity with remarkable sang froid. The saving grace was Mr Pashler, the deputy Clerk and an ex-policeman with an imposing presence who retained an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the local villains. He understudied his Chief and controlled the Court with tact, efficiency and good humour.

In 1976 or thereabouts, the Magistrates’ Court as well as the police station moved to new modern but considerably less atmospheric premises in Alma Road. The latter were ultimately vacated in their turn when Windsor sadly surrendered its Magistrate’s jurisdiction to Slough and Maidenhead.

Windsor Court of Quarter Sessions, dealing with more serious crime, also sat in the St Leonard’s Road Courthouse (and occasionally at the Guildhall). The presiding Judge was the Recorder, the Court Administrator holding the title of Clerk of the Peace, who in the 1950s was Mr Clifford Larke, a partner in the Sheet Street firm of Messrs Durnford and Gale. Clifford Larke was a meticulous and effective advocate inclined to absent-mindedness. On one occasion, arriving at a London Court, he found he had been followed by a horde of cats. It emerged that he had cleaned his shoes that morning with fish paste instead of shoe polish! Should in any Session there he no prisoner to be tried, it was the traditional duty of the Clerk of the Peace to present to the Recorder a pair of white gloves. The Windsor Court of Quarter Sessions was swept away in 1971 by the ‘reforms’ of Dr Beeching, the last Recorder being Mr Frank Blennerhasset, QC, who was accorded for life the title of Honorary Recorder. He died in 1993.

Until the early 1960s Windsor boasted its own County Court, the offices of which were in Sheet Street. This Court also sat in the St Leonard’s Road Courthouse, usually once or twice a week. In the early 1950s the County Court Judge was the legendary Judge Leon, better known to the general public by his first two names Henry Cecil, of Brothers in Law fame. By 1954 Leon had been succeeded by Judge Tom Elder-Jones whose loss of an arm during the war was effectively concealed beneath his judicial robes. He was followed by Judge Rawlings, formerly County Court Judge at Truro, a judicial martinet if ever there was one, and a stickler for impeccable sartorial propriety in the advocates who appeared before him. The loss of its County Court to Slough represented a further blow to Windsor’s judicial hegemony when thereafter all civil jurisdiction was lost to the Royal Borough.

Another Court which sat all too often at St Leonard’s Road, and occasionally at the Guildhall, was that sounding board of human tragedy, Windsor Borough’s Coroner’s Court. Coroners’ Courts also hold inquests into Treasure Trove but I never knew of a case at Windsor. The Windsor Coroner was Mr John Gale. A solicitor from an old Windsor family, he was, although at first meeting somewhat dour and unforthcoming, in reality a personage of calibre, consideration and courtesy. A Coroner’s jury consisted of nine jurors, and many of the St Leonard’s Road shopkeepers were accustomed to regular impressments in the cases where a jury was required to be empanelled. Although insulated by a degree of professional objectivity, one could rarely approach an inquest into a sudden and often violent death with complete equanimity. Whilst a high proportion of inquests were into road deaths, suicides were sadly familiar, each case as pathetic as the drowned woman so evocatively described in Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. I recall the case of one woman, missing for several days, found eventually in her car partially concealed in Windsor Great Park with the most poignant of suicide notes on the seat beside her. Inquests are now heard mainly in the Guildhall, or occasionally in the Coroner’s own office, it being his responsibility to find a suitable location each time the need arises.

In addition to all these Courts, the old Courthouse was used from time to time for rating and tax appeals and other similar tribunals.

With the departure of the last of Windsor’s Courts, the Courthouse was under threat of demolition until rescued and converted to its present use in or about 1978 as the Windsor Arts Centre — still a haven for drama but now of a fictional rather than a realistic kind.

To assuage one’s regrets at Windsor’s judicial impoverishment, perhaps one should philosophise in the words of Anthony Trollope’s Augusta Gresham: ‘Perhaps all these changes are bad, and I rather think they are; but if the world changes one must change too; one can’t go against the world.‘

John E Handcock