There have been many notable Inhabitants of Churt. Scroll down to view the names:

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David Lloyd George

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In 1921 Lloyd George bought a 60 acre estate at Churt in Surrey. He built a large house with panoramic views of the valley below and named it Bron y De. After he resigned the premiership in 1922 he retreated often to Churt. From 1930 Lloyd George withdrew gradually from the political scene and devoted himself to developing his estate and writing his War Memoirs. Over the years he bought more of the surrounding land to expand his estate. Much of the land was poor sandy soil covered with scrub and heather. With characteristic determination LG turned it into fertile land, installed irrigation systems and planted orchards of apple, plum and other fruits trees. He also grew vegetables which he sold from a farm shop. He also had a large apiary and sold honey to Harrods and Fortnum & Masons labelled "From the estate of David Lloyd George OM MP." Lloyd George is still fondly remembered in Churt.

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Frances Stevenson

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frances Stevenson, Countess Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, CBE (7 October 1888 – 5 December 1972) was the mistress, personal secretary, confidante and second wife of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

Frances Stevenson was born in London. She was educated at Clapham High School and Royal Holloway College, where she graduated with a Classics degree in 1910. In 1911 Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, hired Stevenson as a governess for his youngest daughter Megan. Lloyd George and Stevenson were soon attracted to each other. Although Stevenson, who wanted a conventional marriage and many children, hesitated about becoming the mistress of a married man, she agreed to become Lloyd George's personal secretary on his terms — which included a sexual relationship — in 1913.

Stevenson's vitality, prosperity and loyalty to Lloyd George, as well as her discretion in her work and personal life, gained her lover's admiration (although not fidelity). She was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1918 and accompanied Lloyd George to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Stevenson chose the location and supervised the construction of Lloyd George's country house in Churt, Surrey.

She also arranged and collated Lloyd George's extensive archive of personal and political papers so that he could write his War Memoirs. After having been persuaded by Lloyd George to have two abortions, Stevenson gave birth to a daughter, Jennifer, in 1929. Although Stevenson had been having an affair with Thomas Frederic Tweed, a novelist who was one of Lloyd George's political advisers, Lloyd George was probably the father of Stevenson's child.

Two years after the death of Lloyd George's wife Margaret, Stevenson married Lloyd George on 23 October 1943 despite the disapproval of Lloyd George's children from his first marriage. Less than 18 months later, Lloyd George died on 26 March 1945.

Frances Stevenson, the former Dowager Countess Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, lived at Churt for the rest of her life, devoting her time to her family, charitable activities, perpetuating the memory of Lloyd George and writing. Her memoirs The Years That Are Past was published in 1967, and her diary of her life with Lloyd George was published in 1971.

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Harry Louis Nathan, 1st Baron Nathan of Churt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harry Louis Nathan, 1st Baron Nathan, PC (2 February 1889-23 October 1963) was a Liberal politician, who later joined the Labour Party.

Born in London in 1889, son of Michael Henry Nathan, a fine art publisher and J.P. Educated at St Paul's School, he became a solicitor and member of the firm of Herbert Oppenheimer Nathan and Vandyk. He became honorary secretary of the Brady Working Lads' Club, the oldest and largest of the London Jewish Lads' Clubs. Nathan served in World War I, leaving with the rank of Major. He acted as honorary solicitor to the Land and Nation League.

He stood as a Liberal without success in the 1924 general election for Whitechapel and St. George's. He was first elected in 1929 for North-East Bethnal Green and was re-elected in 1931. In 1934, he defected to the Labour Party. Although Labour won the seat at the 1935 general election, Nathan was not their candidate, opting instead to stand in . He lost by just 541 votes.

In 1937, Nathan was able to return to Parliament in a by-election in Wandsworth Central as the Labour candidate. He in turn stepped down in 1940 to make way for Ernest Bevin, and was created a hereditary peer as 1st Baron Nathan of Churt in the County of Surrey in 1940. He continued in active politics from the House of Lords, serving as Under-Secretary of State for War (1945-46) and Minister for Civil Aviation (4 October 1946 - 31 May 1948). He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1946.

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His wife Lady Eleanor Nathan served on the London County Council. He was succeeded by Roger Carol Michael Nathan (b. 1922).

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Anthony William Vivian Loyd

(born on 12 September 1966) is an English journalist and noted war correspondent.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Loyd grew up in Churt on the Hampshire/Surrey border and attended Eton College. He later served with the British Army in Northern Ireland and the first Persian Gulf war. On leaving the army he became a war photographer and relief correspondent for The Daily Telegraph in Bosnia. Afterwards he was put on retainer by The Times of London and regularly sent to war zones around the world. Among the wars he reported were the conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Iraq. Loyd was noted for the risks he took in pursuing his stories. His most recent bylines (as of 15 September 2005) have been from Baghdad, where he has been out on patrol with both the American and Iraqi forces. 
My War Gone By, I Miss It So , is a noted book based on his experiences in Bosnia and Chechnya. The memoir is a chilling depiction of the depravity of war and adrenalin addiction Loyd experienced covering the violent dissolution of Yugloslavia in the mid-1990s. Kirkus Reviewers described My War Gone By as "a breathtaking, soul shattering book". Loyd staggers chapters about war in Bosnia (and Chechnya), and boredom tinged with heroin addiction in London.
Loyd's risk-taking shows similarity to his maternal great-grandfather, Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (1880-1963). Unlike Loyd, the great-grandfather was able to keep excitement in his life while not in battle (Second Boer War, World War I, Somaliland Campaign, Polish-Soviet War, Polish-Ukrainian War, World War II) with a strenuous life of hunting, fishing, polo, fox hunting and pig sticking. Though Loyd was born three years after his great-grandfather's death in 1963, the fact that he had a poor relationship with his father may well have made him model his life after De Wiart. This would account for the extreme risks Loyd takes. His great-grandfather was not only a highly decorated British soldier, he was also one of the most wounded (eleven times, which included the loss of an eye and a hand). He was admired by figures as diverse as Winston Churchill, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Marshall Józef Piłsudski. He was also the reputed model for Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy. Both his great-grandfather and great-grandson served in the British Army, but had little patience for peacetime routines, and both married into the landed aristocracy. Loyd refers to Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart as his grandfather in several articles, whereas Carton de Wiart is actually his maternal great-grandfather. Loyd married Lady Sophia Hamilton, daughter of the 5th Duke of Abercorn in 2002 at Baronscourt, the Duke's 5,500 acre (22 km²) ancestral estate, near Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. They were divorced in 2005, on an amicable basis, occasioned by Loyd's frequent absences reporting on wars. There were no children.

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Anthony Caro

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir Anthony Alfred Caro, OM, CBE, (born 8 March 1924 in New Malden, then in Surrey) is an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblies of metal using 'found' industrial objects. 
Caro was educated at Charterhouse School and Christ's College, Cambridge, earning a degree in engineering. In 1946, after time in the Royal Navy, he started at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) to study sculpture for a year. He transferred to the Royal Academy Schools in 1947, staying until 1952. 
Anthony Caro found modernism when working as an assistant to Henry Moore in the 1950s. After being introduced to the American sculptor David Smith in the early 1960s, he abandoned his earlier figurative work and started constructing sculptures by welding or bolting together collections of prefabricated metal, such as I-beams, steel plates and meshes. Often the finished piece is then painted in a bold flat colour.

Caro found international success in the late 1950s and for a time was popular in the US. He was also influential as a tutor at St Martins School of Art, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London inspiring a younger generation of abstract British Sculptors led by his one time assistant Phillip King as well as reaction group including Bruce McLean, Barry Flanagan, Richard Long and Gilbert and George. He and several former students were asked to join the seminal 1966 show at the Jewish Museum in New York entitled, "Primary Structures" representing the British influence on the "New Art".

Caro taught at Bennington College from 1963 to 1965, along with painter Jules Olitski and sculptor David Smith.

He is often credited with the significant innovation of removing the sculpture from its plinth, although Smith and Brancusi had both previously taken steps in the same direction. Caro's sculptures are usually self supporting and sit directly on the floor. In doing so they remove a barrier between the work and the viewer, who is invited to approach and interact with the sculpture from all sides.

In the 1980s, Caro's work changed direction by introducing more literal elements with a series of figures drawn from classical Greece. Latterly he has also attempted large scale installation pieces. One of these large pieces, Sea Music, stands on the quay at Poole in Dorset. To mark his 80th birthday, a retrospective exhibition was organized by the Tate Gallery in 2005. He was knighted in 1987 and received the Order of Merit in May 2000.

In 2008, he did the "Chapel of Light" installation in the Saint Jean-Baptiste Church of Bourbourg (France)

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Richard Christopher Carrington

Richard Christopher Carrington (26 May 1826 – 27 November 1875) was an English amateur astronomer whose 1859 astronomical observations first corroborated the existence of solar flares as well as their electrical influence upon the Earth and its aurorae; and whose 1863 records of sunspot observations demonstrated differential rotation in the Sun.

He was born May 26, 1826, London, Eng. died Nov. 27, 1875, Churt, near Farnham, Surrey. Carrington built an observatory on the top of an isolated conical hill, 60 feet high, known as the Middle Devil's Jump.

Carrington, by observing the motions of sunspots, discovered the equatorial acceleration of the Sun; i.e., that it rotates faster at the equator than near the poles. He also discovered the movement of sunspot zones toward the Sun’s equator as the solar cycle progresses.

Even though he did not discover the 11-year sunspot activity cycle, his observations of sunspot activity after he heard about Heinrich Schwabe's work led to the numbering of the cycles with Carrington's name. For example, the sunspot maximum of 2002 was Carrington Cycle #23.

Carrington also determined the elements of the rotation axis of the Sun, based on sunspot motions, and his results remain in use today. Carrington rotation is a system for measuring solar longitude based on his observations of the low-latitude solar rotation rate.

Carrington made the initial observations leading to the establishment of Spörer's law.

He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in 1859.

Carrington also won the Prix d'Astronomie, Fondation Lalande, in 1864, for his "Observations of Spots on the Sun from 9 November 1853 to 24 March 1861, Made at Redhill." This award, while certainly of major importance, never was reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, probably due to Carrington's bitter, acrimonious and public criticism of Cambridge University over the appointment of John Adams as the non-observing Director of the Cambridge Observatory (added to Adams'pre-existing academic duties as the Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry.) As measure of displeasure Carrington withdrew the sunspot book from official considerations of the RAS for what would likely have been the books' second Gold Medal, for the year 1865.

On 1 September 1859, Carrington and Richard Hodgson, another English amateur astronomer, independently made the first observations of a solar flare. Because of a simultaneous "crochet" observed in the Kew Observatory magnetometer record by Balfour Stewart and a geomagnetic storm observed the following day, Carrington suspected a solar-terrestrial connection. World wide reports on the effects of the geomagnetic storm of 1859 were compiled and published by Elias Loomis which support the observations of Carrington and Balfour Stewart.

Carrington soon established an observatory, of unusual design, at Churt, near Farnham. He lived the life of a semi-recluse there, though he used the observatory relatively little. And then came the “unexpected tragedy”. In 1868, at the age of forty-two, Carrington picked up a strikingly beautiful but illiterate woman of little more than half his age, in London’s Regent Street. Rosa Helen Jeffries was then living as the common-law wife of a former dragoon called Rodway, whom she described as her brother. In August of the following year, she married the astronomer, while continuing to live with her dragoon. Two years later, she moved to Churt, but Rodway was not to be cast aside so easily. With witnesses in plenty, he pursued her there and stabbed her – seriously, but not fatally. In a widely reported trial, he was sentenced to twenty years for assault, but died in prison. Rosa died in 1875, seemingly from an overdose of chloral, to which both she and Carrington were addicted; and he was found dead within a fortnight, with empty chloral bottles for company. This resulted in the improbable rumour that his death was a case of suicide, after the murder of an adored but unfaithful wife.

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James Clark Hook an english painter lived at Silverbeck in Jumps Road, Churt.

English painter, born in Clerkenwell, London on 21 November 1819. Hook began his training under John Jackson, the portrait painter. In 1836, he completed his studies in the Royal Academy schools and by 1844 he had won the gold medal in a Houses of Parliament competition. In either 1845 or 1846 (sources differ) he was awarded the travelling prize from the Royal Academy, a scholarship that enabled him to spend a number of years in France and Italy. Having been thus exposed to the Italian Old Masters, Hook chose to develop his skills as a history and genre painter. On his return to London in 1848 he continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy. His subject matter remained within literary spheres. However, the extreme popularity of a rustic genre piece, ‘Luff, Boy!’, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1859, prompted him to shift his specialization away from history towards scenes of coastal and rural genre. It is from this second period that his ‘Catching a Mermaid’ (National Maritime Museum, London) stems. Hook was elected Royal Academician in 1860. He was also awarded a fellowship by the Royal Society of Painters and Etchers. Having won the admiration of Ruskin and captured the imagination of his Victorian audience, Hook died in Churt, Surrey, on 14 April 1907, aged 87, after a highly successful career.

 

Industrialist Frank Mason spent the later part of his life in the area, and provided the community with a village hall, which remains the hub of the village.

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The pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais had links with the village, subject of his most famous work Bubbles Henry James, remained a prominent figure of the community. A respected lady by the name of Mrs Lash played a leading role in the dramatic society. No surprise that her most famous grandchildren are the actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes. The Blue Peter presenter John Noakes lived in the village, he became a regular sight walking the famous Shep. The world renowned gentleman of golf commentating Mr Peter Alliss has made the village his home for many years. Kevin Keegan resided in Green Lane, when playing for Southampton Football Club. International jewellery designer David Buxton grew up in the village, the area influenced a lot of his work. Frances Stevenson, wife of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George lived in the village; his family still has presence. The cricketing brothers Harry Walker and Thomas Walker were born in the village. The journalist Anthony Loyd grew up in Churt. The Police drummer, Stuart Copeland, had a short spell in the village, with his family. Lord John Hunt lived for a period in the village, he was the force behind the ascent of Everest in 1953 with Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing. As well as a decorated military career. Roger Black, the Olympic Gold medal winner, also lived in the village. Wishanger Recording Studios are world famous, and rock producer John "Mutt" Lange did some his best work from here with the likes of The Cars, AC/DC and more.