So you think you know a lot about Rovers and their players ?

Jan 30, 2019 10:37:38 GMT Igitur said:

Sir Hubert Ashton KBE MC, please. OK, only had the MC (only!) when he played the one game for us.

From the superb Bristol Rovers Pirates in Profile Players Who's Who book 1920-1993.Ashton sounds a remarkable man. MC or not !

Sir HUBERT ASHTON KBE MC
b 13.2.1898 Calcutta d 17.6.1979 South Weald
5’ 9½”; 11 st 4 lbs FB
Début: 2.5.25 v Reading
Career: Winchester College; Trinity College, Cambridge; West Bromwich Albion (amateur); February 1920 Corinthians; 23.8.24 Bristol Rovers [1,0]; 21.8.26 Orient [5,0] (to May 1927).

Astonishing though it may sound, a Conservative MP whose portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery played League football for Bristol Rovers. Appearing in trial games, he was considered “a second Banfield of Bristol City”, but his solitary game for Rovers did not live up to expectations. Reports indicate that Hubert Ashton played too far forward, allowing Reading’s Hugh Davey to score a hat-trick in a 4-1 win; his Orient début came in a 6-0 defeat at Blackpool in December 1926 and he played alongside Jimmy Gardner and Jack Townrow, two players also on Rovers’ books during their careers. Greater success came his way on the cricket field, where he scored 236 not out for Cambridge University against Free Foresters at Fenners in 1920 (one of eight first-class centuries), 75 in seventy-two minutes for an England amateur side against Australia at Eastbourne in 1921 and was a triple cricket blue at Cambridge, scoring 118 in the 1921 Varsity match and being captain in 1922, the year he was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year. He “must have taken a high place had he been able to continue in first-class cricket” (Wisden). He played in 21 matches for Essex sporadically between 1921 and 1939, and for both Europeans and Burma during 1926-27, twice registering 1,000 runs in a first-class season. Greater yet was Hubert Ashton’s political career. Having won a Military Cross on the Western Front with the Royal Field Artillery, where he served from April 1917 to August 1919, he worked for the Burmah Oil Company and was a Conservative Member of Parliament for Chelmsford from 1950 to 1964, serving as Personal Private Secretary to the Exchequer, Lord Privy Seal and, briefly, Home Secretary in 1957. President of the MCC in 1960-61, he was also President of Essex CCC between 1948 and 1970 as well as their Chairman from 1946 to 1951, High Sheriff of Essex and a Church Commissioner. He was knighted in 1959. Hubert Ashton’s family background is extraordinary in that, at every turn, lie famous names from the world of politics, sport and the Church. A nephew of two Kent cricketers, Alfred Inglis (1856-1919, whose great-grandson is the famous conductor Anthony Inglis) and John Inglis (1853-1923, who also played in one unofficial football international for Scotland in 1871), and a nephew of the England rugby international Rupert Inglis (1863-1916, an Army chaplain who was killed at the Battle of the Somme), he was the fourth of five sons to Hubert Shorrock Ashton (1862-1943) and Victoria Alexandrina Inglis (1858-1929), whose father John Eardley Wilmot Inglis (1814-62), the son and grandson of bishops of Nova Scotia, had led the British forces at the Siege of Lucknow; one brother, Gilbert, played cricket for Worcestershire, whilst two more, Claude and Percy, played for Essex – Hubert, Gilbert and Claude all captained Cambridge. Their father had acquired a fifty-acre field in Essex in 1912 to turn it into a sports field for his sone, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, Winston Churchill and Ramsay McDonald all attending the official opening. Indeed, Claude also won an England cap at football, captaining his country in the goalless draw with Northern Ireland in October 1925 when “the big disappointment of the match was CT Ashton, who wasted many good passes by wild shooting and rarely led the England forwards with any marked ability”; sadly, Claude was killed on active service in October 1942, the Cambridge football and cricket blue Roger Winlaw dying in the same plane. With Hubert Ashton, though, escaping a feeling of privilege is difficult. Hubert Ashton married on 2nd June 1927 Dorothy Margaret Gaitskell (1899-1983), the daughter of Arthur Gaitskell (1869-1915) and Adelaide Mary Jamieson (1870-1956) and sister of his one-time political rival Hugh Gaitskell (1906-63), and they had two sons and two daughters.