In Memoriam

Since the publication of the last Journal the following members have died: E. E. Roberts, G. W. Young, W. B. Odgers, A. W. Sykes, A. Rule, M. Botterill.

Geoffrey Winthrop Young

By the death of Geoffrey Winthrop Young on September 6th, 1958, the Club lost one of its small distinguished band of honorary members. An obituary appeared in the ‘ Times’ on September 8th of that year and full notice of his career by Sir Claude Elliott in the Alpine Journal for May, 1959.

After walking tours in Wales with his father, Sir George Young, and reading parties in the Lakes when he was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cam­bridge, Geoffrey Young first visited the Alps in 1897; in 1900 he was elected to the Alpine Club. In eleven subsequent seasons of Alpine Climbing before the first World War he rose to an outstanding position among British mountaineers, climbing sometimes guideless but more often with such guides as Louis Theytaz (the ‘ Young-grat’ on the Weisshorn, etc.), the Lochmatter brothers and more especially, from 1905 onwards, Joseph Knubel (the S.E. face of the Weisshorn, the Furgg-grat of the Matterhorn, the Taschhorn by the S.E. face and, in 1911 the Mer de Glace face of the Grdpon and a whole series of new climbs in the Mont Blanc area).

Then came the first war in which, after a brief period as a war correspondent accredited to the French armies, he volunteered for the Friends’ Ambulance Unit and commanded it on the Western Front; thus he saw the bombardment of Ypres at the end of 1914. When Italy entered the war he was persuaded to join an enlarged Friends’ Ambulance Unit with its own field hospital which served with the Italian Second Army on the Isonzo front. It was when he was commanding this unit in 1917 that an Austrian shell from behind Monte Gabriele shattered his left thigh, necessitating a high amputation.

Appalled at the inadequacy of the artificial limbs usually provided, he used his years of convalescence to contrive a practical peg leg of duralumin; with this he first practised in the Lakes and at Easter 1919 (when I first met him) on the Snowdon range from Pen-y-Pass; the right leg soon developed great muscularity, providing a strong contrast to the elegant Italian artificial hmb with which he had been provided. During subsequent years he was able to make many expeditions on British hills and while living at Cambridge, 1924 to 1930, his home became a favourite meeting place for undergraduate mountaineers; he was also invited by the Fell and Rock Club to deliver a tribute at the dedication of the summit of Great Gable to the memory of members of that Club who had fallen in the War.

In 1927 he returned to the Alps, chmbing with old friends and guides whom he had known before the war; in that year, after some training climbs, he reached the summit of Monte Rosa; the next year he was first in the Dolomites, then, returning to the Pennine Alps, he climbed the Wellenkuppe, the Weisshorn (to within 500 ft. of the top) and the Matterhorn; in 1929 from the Montanvert he climbed the Petit Charmoz, the Rdquin and the Grepon.   In 1939 he ascended the Zinal Rothorn from the Trift; this was his last Alpine climb and nearly proved fatal, for while adjusting his snow glasses he lost his balance and fell over an overhang.

In 1938 he became Vice-President and in 1941 President of the Alpine Club. To meet the problems of new mountaineering developments he took a leading part in forming the British Mountaineering Council whereby the Alpine Club became closely associated with other clubs mainly concerned with home chmbing. At the Alpine Club Centenary in 1957 he was selected to deliver his last paper ‘ An Alpine Aura ‘ to that Club.

His association with the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club arose from his long friendship with my uncle, William Cecil Slingsby, with whom he used to stay at Carleton-in-Craven and whose youngest daughter, Eleanor, he married in the Spring of 1918. He was also a friend of the Brigg family, our erstwhile neighbours at Kildwick Hall. In 1907 he delivered a paper on ‘ Some Alpine Variations’ to the Club which is recorded in Y.R.C J. Vol. II, No. 8, page 253. It was then that he was elected an Honorary Member; bis election as such is therefore contemporaneous with that of Matthew Botterill as an ordinary member. At the Annual Dinner in 1910 he toasted the Club and his speech is recorded under the title ‘ Romance and Effort ” in Y.R.C.J., Vol.111, No. 11, page 233. After the first War, in his eagerness to keep abreast of new chmbing developments, he went over by arrangement to see C. D. Frankland making solitary ascents of his own routes upon Almscliff and he was also a witness of the first ascent of Clogwyn d’ur Arddu’s western buttress by Jack Longland, Frank Smythe and others.

Geoffrey Young leaves behind memories of help and inspiration accorded to numerous young mountaineers and to many persons disabled like himself in the first War and a magnificent example of courage and endurance, shown in his pre-war achievements, in his war service, in his acceptance of the loss of his leg as ‘ an irresistible challenge ‘ and finally in his struggle against his last illness. When he delivered his 1957 paper to the Alpine Club he did so without faltering but at the end was obviously very tired and in pain; this was the last time I saw him; his wife had told me the evening before that he had only a short time to live; nothing but his will and his exceptional fitness and strong heart enabled him to survive for another nine months.

He was not only a very genuine lover of the mountains but also a great believer in their influence on character by their call to adventure and self-discipline. His feeling for them appears in his 1907 paper to the Club and again fifty years later in his 1957 paper, from the conclusion of which I quote an abbreviated extract:—

” Mountaineering cannot exist divorced from mountains; from their aesthetic appreciation, and from the strong and continuous response to them.
Not personal prowess or competitive achievement but the understanding of that which mountains—and mountains only—mean to us; the long harsh days of endurance and discipline; die hours of splendid sunshine; of glorious self-forgetfulness; the hours of blizzard … and of the little cats’ paws of fear, that die away again as fate is pushed back step by step.

Most memorable—that hour before dawn . . .And then—the miracle of the coming of light, as it breaks only over great mountains. Light alive with a purpose . . .bringing out of dead matter and darkness a fresh resurgence of cleansing spirit.”

F. H. Slingsby.

William Billing Odgers

W. B. Odgers who died on December 28th , 1959, joined the Club in 1919. He was never himself a very active member, but was always keenly interested in everything Members had done. He was a great lover of the countryside in all its aspects, especially our Yorkshire hills and dales which he knew so well and in such detail.

He was a voracious reader of the more serious travel books, and having a retentive memory had the capacity of comparing the various authors’ experi-ences and completing an unusually comprehensive picture of little known lands, and the problems facing big expeditions.

Davis Burrow.

Arthur William Sykes

Arthur William Sykes who died at the age of 91 at his home in Huddersfield during September of 1959 would only be known to the older members of the Club. He was a close friend of the first President—George Lowe—who would, no doubt, be the one to encourage Sykes to join the Club in 1911. For a large number of years he had taken no active part in the affairs of the Club—indeed for some years before his retirement from the Textile Industry, some 20 years ago, he could not indulge in long walks—but to the end he retained a very keen interest in the Club and was very proud of his connection with the Yorkshire Ramblers. He was by nature of a quiet, retiring disposition, with gentle manners and an abiding love of the country-side and particularly of the hills.  He was a keen naturalist and photographer.  

W. Stoney.

Alexander Rule

Alexander Rule, who died in his eightieth year on January 12th, 1960, after a short illness, joined the Club in 1907 when he was a lecturer and demonstrator in chemistry at Liverpool University. As contemporary numbers of the Journal show, Rule was a keen and active member until the outbreak of the first war; he was a leading spirit in the early survey parties in Gaping Gill and was one of the party trapped by a flooded Fell Beck in May, 1909, when they had to spend an uncomfortable thirty-six hours underground. In 1908 he joined Brodrick and others in the exploration of the Florence Court cave system in County Fermanagh and in 1913 took part hi the excavations at Foxholes above Clapham Cave, when sundry prehistoric bones were unearthed. In between these activities he managed several successful seasons in the Alps.

During the first World War, Rule worked for the Ministry of Munitions and after the war he spent some years in India advising on wood distillation and the utilisation of forest products. From 1924 to 1927 he represented British interests in Mannheim during the development of the Bergius ‘ oil from coal’ process and then joined Imperial Chemical Industries at Billingham for research in this field, becoming Assistant Research Manager and Laboratories’ Controller.   He retired in 1944.

On returning to the North of England in 1927, Rule immediately showed his deep and lasting interest in the Club. Although he did not again take a very active part in climbing and pot-holing he was a frequent attender at meets, particularly the now legendary Gaping Gill camps of the late twenties and early thirties. His enthusiasm for and loyalty to the Club were manifested in many ways and he was instrumental in introducing a number of his younger colleagues at Billingham to membership. He had been a Vice-President in 1909-10 and when he was elected President for 1934-35 he proved a worthy successor to a long line of holders of this office, rarely missing a meet or a committee meeting during his term and guiding the Club with energy and wisdom.

After the second World War, towards the end of which he retired from Imperial Chemical Industries, we did not see much of him. Distance and his inability to take an active part kept him from meets and, except on one or two occasions, his health in the winter months kept him from attending the Dinner, although each year he made an effort to do so. The writer of these notes, who was one of the recruits introduced by Rule in the twenties, has spent many an odd hour in his flat on the walls of which hung one of Percy Robinson’s photos of Gaping Gill and a group including Rule, Percy and Brodrick in camp outside Foxholes. On these occasions Rule would reminisce about the Club’s activities in those far-off days before 1914 and tell tales of the stalwarts of that time, when push-bike or horse-drawn trap were the normal means of transport to meets.  

 G. S. Gowing.

Matthew Botterill

In the second great wave of the Club before the first war the Botterill group were very prominent, Fred the almost legendary rock climber of Botterill’s Slab and the North West on Pillar, Matthew with his yawl in the Hebrides, who trained up L. S. Chappell, D.S.O. (Zeebrugge) and Holmes as seamen, and not to be omitted, Arthur who made the eight-inch ladders which conquered Mere Gill and revolutionised pot-holing. Williamson, brother-in-law, was vice-president for four years or more and the cottage at Stainforth was a social centre.

Fred left the family business in 1907, but Mattie was managing director for years. He moved to Ilkley about 1917 and constantly entertained us on our visits to the rocks.

He was well known in literary circles. His band was quite a feature at Wasdale Head; he himself was a skilful harpist and played in the former Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra. He must have done much climbing with Fred before the first war and has articles in the Journal on his pioneer climbs in the Hebrides from 1920. There is a 2-page article (Y.R.C J., Vol. V, No. 18, p. 309) on the extraordinary Gaping Gill descent in 1904, man-hauling by Payne and the three Botterills, before any of them joined the Y.R.C., and containing a vivid description of what happens in the way of vibration to a hemp rope. No wonder they headed the second wave, but we must not forget Wingfield, Kentish, Hill, Rule and Brodrick.

For many years Y.R.C. men crewed for Matthew in his io-ton yawl ” Molly ” off the Scottish west coast and in the Hebrides and there are several accounts of these combined sailing and chmbing holidays in the Journals. I remember him turning up at Easter with his crew at Fort William. Wright, who sailed with Botterill four times after 1920, says he had a deep knowledge of the Highland coast, a sound sense of seamanship, a strong sense of humour, was quite firm about being called ” Skipper ” and delighted in telling in a kindly way of the blunders made by his amateur crew.       

E. E. Roberts.

Ernest E. Roberts

E. E. Roberts, who died on the 21st June, 1960, was a Member of the Y.R.C. for fifty-two years. He joined the Club in 1908; in the same year he was also elected to the Alpine Club, being proposed by Geoffrey Winthrop Young; he resigned from the A.C. in 1934.

Bom in Salford, Roberts was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he won both the Junior and Senior University Prizes for Mathematics—as did his younger brother Walter, also a Member of the Y.R.C. Both brothers achieved First Class Honours in Mathematics.

After going down from Oxford, Ernest had some teaching experience at Lampeter in South Wales before joining the Board of Education as a Junior Inspector in which capacity he served in Lichfield and Wolverhampton. In 1904 he was promoted to Senior Inspector for the North Riding of Yorkshire (eastern portion) and in 1909 for the whole of the North Riding, where he remained until 1913 when he was appointed to the Bermondsey, Camberwell and Lambeth districts of the London Section. In 1916 he was seconded to the Ministry of Munitions and a few weeks later to the War Office where he became responsible for the administration of the leather trade and the supply of army boots. In October, 1919, he returned to the Board of Educa­tion as Inspector in the West Riding covering the central portion—Batley, Dewsbury, Ossett and Wakefield, a post which he occupied until he retired at the end of 1933. At that time he was living in Leeds but moved to Harrogate on retirement.

Roberts was attracted to the hills early in life and, like so many others, his interest grew from walking our native lulls in the Lake District. It was at Wasdale Head that he met and climbed with the giants of those days, Oppen­heimer, the Abraham brothers, and many other interesting climbers; he was himself no mean rock climber.

He went first to the Alps in 1903 with his brother Walter, and began chmbing with guides who helped them to become proficient by allowing them to lead and to come down last over difficult places. Soon he became a skilled guide-less climber and he and J. M. Davidson climbed guideless up to the first world war. It was in 1910 in the Dauphin^ that Roberts and Davidson made the first ascent of the season of La Meije, having with them a novice, Crawford, who was making his first visit to the Alps and who later was a member of two Everest Expeditions. Ernest Roberts made ascents of all the major peaks in the Alps and it was ever a delight to be climbing with him.

In 1906 Payne introduced him to potholing a couple of years before he joined the Club which became, as he often said, his spiritual home. He came into potholing and caving whilst there was much to be done but he always insisted, as Members will recall from his happy speech when he opened the Lowstern Hut at Clapham in 1958, that he was of the ” second wave ” of pot-holers. He was in the great siege of Mere Gill, his first big venture, and was also involved in the Gaping Gill flood episode, but he always paid tribute to the pioneer work of the early Members of the Club. He was in the first descent of Sunset Hole when a mishap to Boyd led to the first cave rescue on record and to some consequent hard thinking on potholing practice. He became a great leader of potholing expeditions in, as he termed it, the Golden Age of Pot­holing, and his introduction of the light Botterill ladder revolutionised the sport. He also introduced the use of the pulley block, thus making it possible for all members of a party to take part in the adventure. Roberts was there when Lost Johns’ Cave on Leek Fell was finally explored and amongst very many other first descents, far too numerous to tabulate, was included Gingling Hole on Fountains Fell which he did with W. V. Brown and Jack Hilton.

The 1914-1918 war was a severe blow to the Club’s potholing activities, and after the war finished it was Roberts who was largely responsible for keeping the sport alive in the Club and introducing new young men—of the right type—to take the place of the older generation. Roberts was always an out­standing figure in the Club and an absolute authority on the Mountains and Potholes of the British Isles. Ireland claimed his attention in caving and he was in the early expeditions of the Club to Enniskillen and the opening up of the Marble Arch system, Pollnagollum, and many other Irish Pots in Counties Fermanagh and Shgo. Somerset, South Wales and all the caving districts saw Roberts with E. A. Baker, Cuttriss and many others.

He was the first chairman of the Cave Rescue Organisation, formed after the Gingling Hole accident in 1934 and he guided its affairs with wisdom through difficult times.

Though potholing and caving were perhaps his greatest love, he by no means neglected mountaineering both at home and abroad. He climbed many times in Scotland and J. H. B. Bell in one of his books pays the greatest tribute to Roberts as a safe mountaineer^[1].  He climbed also with F. S. Smythe in the Tyrol, the Dolomites^[2] and Corsica^[3]. He often recounted how he started Frank Smythe chmbing on our own local Almscliff and Smythe mentions this in his book ‘ Climbs and Ski-runs ‘ (Page 10). Roberts chmbed with many famous mountaineers and fortunately retained all his correspondence with them over the years, a fascinating record of long friendships. He was instrumental in guiding many youngsters in potholing and he can best be summed up as the complete mountaineer and potholer.

Quite apart from his mountaineering and potholing, Roberts was a man of many varied interests; his keen powers of observation, his careful thought, sound judgment and strict accuracy made him an authority on any subject of which he had knowledge, and it was always a delight and an absorbing
entertainment to listen to him holding forth at Club meets. These interests included such diverse subjects as the facts behind the Arthurian legends, the history of Scotland, weather conditions, glaciology, the correct pronunciation of the Gaelic speech, and many other things besides mountains and caves. He was always greatly amused at the extent to which popular ideas often deviated from the truth, and he was at his most entertaimng in exploding these fallacies.

Roberts was active with the Club up to the last, he was in fact at the joint meet with the Fell and Rock Climbing Club at Clapham the week-end of 13th-15th May, only a few weeks before he died. During his many years in the Y.R.C. his counsel was always eagerly sought and respected. Eleven years after his election to the Club he became Vice-President, from 1919 to 1922, and was Editor o£ the Journal for twenty-eight years, from 1920 until 1948. He was President from 1923 to 1925, became a Life Member in 1938 and was made Honorary Member of the Club in 1949; a remarkable record of devoted service.

Perhaps, as the present Editor of the Journal has commented ” Roberts’ best obituary is the publication of his own memoirs.” It was only during the last four years of his life that he could be prevailed upon to tackle this^task and though he had completed a huge amount of writing, it was never finished. However, as Roberts always kept meticulously detailed diaries of his activities and a terrific amount of correspondence and personal notes, it is hoped that it may be possible to complete the work.

Roberts’ maxim was that mountains should always be treated with the greatest respect and that the exploration of a severe pothole should be considered the equal of a major Alpine Expedition. ” Both can hit the careless and reckless very hard indeed.”

We can consider it a privilege to have known Ernest Roberts who was held by all his many friends in very affectionate regard.

E.C.D.
J.H.
S.M.
F. H.S.

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