Monday 27 January 2025

LAHS Research Grant Funding: Leicester Connections and the Development of Winter Sports

This small grant went towards archival research costs in the UK and Switzerland

Last year, we made a small grant to Susan Barton to help with the costs of documentary research at a number of archives as part of her wider project exploring the links of Leicester people to the development of winter sports in the  late 19th and early 20th centuries. She has now provided us with the following update on progress made:

The aim of the project is to build upon earlier research that revealed, surprisingly, that there were a number of people with Leicester connections that were involved in the early development and popularisation of winter sports, such as bobsleigh champion and artist Lawrence Gale Linnell, curler Captain Thomas Hughes Stokes Robertson-Aikman and others. There is even a section of the Schreckhorn mountain in Grindelwald named the Andersongrat after Leicester mountaineer and businessman, John Stafford Anderson. Since I wrote about them, I have discovered that the first British Ski Champion, Charles Colwyn Rolph, was born in Leicester and that the first British downhill ski champion was the son of George Cumberland Dobbs, a former schoolmaster at Mill HIll and Wyggeston Boys’ Schools in Leicester, who played rugby for the Tigers in the early 1890s. Dobbs was later employed in Sir Henry Lunn’s travel business and in that capacity opened up the resorts of Villars, Montana sur Sierre (now Crans Montana) and Wengen for winter sports tourism. Although I had mentioned Rolph and Dobbs in earlier papers published in Switzerland, I was curious about their Leicester connections and wanted to explore these more deeply.

George Cumberland Dobbs seems to have been an unassuming man, interested mainly in the outdoors and sports but he invested in a Ceylon tea plantation and set off to work there, to be joined by his new wife six months later. His wife died just days after arriving and George returned to Britain. On a tour of Italy soon afterwards, he met a rich widow, Rosalind Williams, who was part of the influential and wealthy Potter family with many family and political connections. Rosalind was sister to Beatrice Webb, aunt to Sir Stafford Cripps, a friend of the Asquiths and friends with many other important figures of the early twentieth century. Rosalind kept a very detailed journal and wrote openly about her troubled relationships. She had an affair within weeks of her marriage and to avoid scandal, and the debts of her husband, the couple set off to live abroad, ending up in Switzerland, where George got a job organising winter sports activities in the hotels operated by Sir Henry Lunn in resorts opened for the first time in winter. I was astonished to learn that there were Suffragette demonstrations in the Villars hotel and that the Pankhursts and Pethwick-Lawrences stayed there for a holiday when released from prison under the Cat and Mouse Act to recover from forced-feeding and hunger strikes. The Dobbs children were all expert skiers, having been raised in the Alps. Eldest son Lawrence was the first British downhill champion, Bill was also a winner in a subsequent year and their sister, Kitty (later Mrs Malcolm Muggeridge), was British ladies’ champion.

I have been fortunate enough, with the aid of an LAHS grant, to visit the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics, the Royal Geographical Society archive where I studied the journals of Rosalind Dobbs, the National Archives to examine some of the Lunn accounts, and the hotels where Dobbs was employed in Villars and Montana in Switzerland and in Chateau d’Oex where he formed the first winter sports club in the village.

I am hoping to complete my research into George C Dobbs this summer, with a visit to Wengen.

To investigate Charles Colwyn Rolph, I haven’t had to travel so far as there are a lot of records and documents about him in the Leicestershire Records Office, the Leicestershire Regiment’s online journals, reports of his sporting achievements as a youth and from his grand daughter who I was able to connect with. Tragically, Rolph’s story came to an abrupt end in October 1915 when he was killed serving in the World War One. I also discovered information about his family circumstances that may have led to him being taken to Switzerland for the first time as a boy by his mother. As well as excelling as an athlete and a rugby player for the army team, Charles became an expert ice hockey player, a record breaking mountaineer, ski jumper and cross-country and Telemark skier. A particularly astonishing discovery was that Rolph’s parents lived in the building where I was born, Westcotes House, for several years before his father died in 1918. I had always thought that the Harris family were the only ones to occupy the property before it became a maternity home.

Having the Ski Club GB archive in Leicester at De Montfort University is a tremendous asset that has helped in the initial stages of the research. The Leicester Tigers and Ski Club minute books, reports on competitions and photograph albums have been especially helpful.

Since I began this project, my work has attracted international interest. A Swiss journalist and ski historian, Michael Luetscher wants us to collaborate on a project looking at Sir Henry and Arnold Lunn for a book in a series on Swiss economic and business history. I arranged a meeting with him while I was in Switzerland last summer. An American PhD student at Notre Dame University has arranged a meeting with me to discuss my work as she is studying ski history for her PhD.

I am hoping to publish articles and papers using my research from this project, probably for the Tourism History and BSSH (sports history) journals and chapters in books, most likely published in Switzerland where I have published previously, and also the Leicestershire Historian because of the local link, I feel that there is scope for public history and am already hoping to do some work with Leicester Cathedral on Rolph as he has a memorial there in St George’s Chapel.

Susan Barton

Susan's previous article in the Leicestershire Historian on Lawrence Linnell (1870-1957)-Leicester's Winter Sport Champion appearing in Vol.48 (2012) can be accessed here.