Claxton Village, Norfolk

Major Derek Swithin Allhusen, CVO (9 January 1914 – 24 April 2000) was an English equestrian who was a 54-year-old grandfather when he rode Lochinvar to team gold and individual silver medals at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico.

Derek Allhusen was born in London and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1937 he married The Hon Claudia Betterton. He served throughout the Second World War with the 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers, being awarded the American Silver Star in 1944.

On returning from Germany he brought back two horses with him and settled in Claxton, Norfolk.  He rode one of the horses, Laura, when representing Britain in the pentathlon at the 1948 Winter Olympic Games.  He eventually took up eventing in 1955, riding Laura’s daughter Laurien on two European Championship teams, winning a team gold medal in 1957, then team silver and individual bronze in 1959.  In 1961 he bought Irish-bred Lochinvar and rode her in two winning European Championship teams (in 1967 and 1969) as well as the gold and silver at the 1968 Summer Olympics.  He was awarded an MBE for his achievements but declined it, feeling his team-mates Richard Meade, Jane Bullen and Reuben Jones also deserved recognition.

On his retirement from the sport he continued as a breeder and Laurien’s son Laurieston was ridden to team and individual Olympic gold medals in 1972 Games in Munich, with Richard Meade in the saddle.  Allhusen was president of the British Horse Society from 1986 to 1988.

Allhusen was appointed Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1983.

In November 1955, 1956 and 1957 he was nominated as a High Sheriff of Norfolk.

“The Major” lived with his wife at Claxton Manor from 1947 until his death in 2000, though the Manor remained in the family until its eventual sale to the current owners in 2010.  The Major was a universally popular figure who allowed villagers fairly free rein to roam his land, whether on foot or horseback, and is still regarded with great affection by villagers who knew him.  He is buried in Claxton churchyard.

Mark Cocker, a graduate of UEA, is a prize-winning naturalist, author, biographer, columnist and reviewer.  Mark received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the UEA in July 2016.  Mark and his family lived in The Hollies on The Warren for several years until summer 2021 when the family relocated to Derbyshire.

His best known work is Birds Britannica while his most successful is Crow Country.  His works include a study of travel writing and a history of European destruction of tribal peoples.  Mark lives and works in Claxton. His latest work is Claxton: Further Field Notes from a Small Planet.

Mark said of his Honorary Doctorate: “I am hugely honoured and see it as the finest and most significant formal acknowledgment I have received for my work in 30 years.”

Click here for Wikipedia entry for Mark Cocker

Claxton’s very own Gilbert White – William Robert Driver 1935 – 2011

Billy was a diligent amateur naturalist who collected records of sightings while working and walking on the marshes and farmland of the Yare Valley around Claxton. These records are a lasting memorial to him and are now seen as an immensely valuable reference work.  Sadly Billy died on 28 June 2011.  He lived in Claxton for many years.

He married Priscilla in 1957 and worked on Claxton Manor Farm for over 40 years. He was Chairman of Claxton’s Parish Council for 18 years during which time he helped to secure the necessary funding to construct the new village hall.

The following notes are taken from the book “Claxton, a thousand years of village life” which was published in 2005.

Claxton’s Gilbert White
Claxton is very fortunate in one of its long-standing residents, William (‘Billy’) Driver, who has been interested in birds most of his life and has chronicled his daily observations for over 30 years.  Most of them refer to his sightings either on Langley’s Abbey Farm or Claxton Manor Farm, where he was employed for the whole of his working life (1950-2000).  The notes, beautifully handwritten either in bound notebooks (1964-1982) or loose-leaf folders (1983-1997), are a meticulously detailed chronicle of nature in our parish.
Their significance lies partly in their continuous character, which required remarkable discipline from him, and partly in the narrow range of their focus.  In effect Billy’s Claxton notes are a lens through which one can observe on a minute basis the changes in the bird populations of south-east England over three decades.  They offer a protrait of Claxton’s wildlife in the second half of the twentieth century that is every bit as intimate as Gilbert White’s celebrated journal on Selborne.  Billy describes his early life especially how he became interested in nature:

‘I was born in 1935 in the house where my mother and father, Geoffrey and Minnie, lived about three doors down from the Wherry, the old pub at Langley Staithe.  We then moved further down the road to a Langley council house just outside Hardley village.  My father worked at Cantley sugarbeet factory, which he reached on a boat which used to come and collect the men at Langley Staithe.  Or they used to bike down the track to a point opposite the factory, where they could be ferried across.
When I was a child, my father used to trap birds in nets, presumably to make a bit of extra money.  I remember him netting goldfinches and possibly also chaffinches and linnets – things that were nice to look at.  I suppose I got interested in  birds because of this but also I used to go round with an air rifle shooting sparrows and such.  I later grew out of it and since I was seeing birds daily on the Abbey Farm, where I started to work when I was 15, it just took off from there.  My wife, Cilla (Priscilla) and I married in 1957 and we lived in a series of farmhouses either in Claxton or Langley, until we moved into our present bungalow Hirundo in 1982.’