THE MYSTERIOUS SHOOTING OF THE EDWARD WORMALD THYNNE

Copyright Valerie Martin 2011

The Thynne family left their mark on Findon during their tenure at Muntham Court.   Smoking is frowned on today but members of the Findon Football Club actually deemed it popular and held a Smoking Concert at the Gun in in the Square in 1914.   The tables were adorned with numerous elegant silver cups won by their president, Ulric Oliver Thynne of Muntham Court.   This esteemed gentleman had won them in polo and point-to-point competitions.

I will now turn to the mysterious shooting of a member of the Thynne family.     These are the facts as I have been told them.   Thursday started at Muntham Court like any other day of the week on 8th October 1925 but I guess it went down in history as a Thursday to be remembered by everyone in the great house at that point in time.

Suddenly a resounding shot rang out from inside the mansion and was heard far and wide.  Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned round and look at one another in shock and puzzlement. 

Edward Wormald Thynne, born 17th March 1905, the 20-year-old son of Colonel Ulric Oliver Thynne, had shot himself.   He was unmarried.

The Thynnes were a sporting family and the mansion not unnaturally contained a Gun Room.  The local doctor was immediately called and it was said by some at the time that the door to the room where Edward was discovered dead, was rather suspiciously locked from the inside.  I heard this rumour myself when I moved to Findon 68 years later so the story was still in vogue with the local villagers in 1993.  Back in the 1920s, Edward had been considered a popular young man and liked by everyone.  He was thought by some to be rather scientifically minded and always a joker. 

Here comes an intriguing little twist in the story.    Edward's younger sister, Ulrica, did not attend the Findon school with the village children but was taught by a pretty governess named Miss Filey.  Ulrica was accompanied at her lessons by the two sons of Mrs Barbara Hylton Madge of New End House.  Rumour was rife in the Muntham household among the servants at the time, as well as in the village of Findon, that Miss Filey could in fact have been the cause of the shooting.   And that is where we will have to leave our imaginations!

A full Coroner’s Court was subsequently held into the tragic death.  After hearing the full evidence, I understand that the verdict was returned of “death following the accidental discharge of a pistol”.  But still the village rumours did not die.

A Thynne family cemetery was subsequently established on the Downs above Muntham.  It commanded a magnificent view of the surrounding countryside.  Edward Thynne was rather significantly the first person to be buried there and his headstone was designed by Sir Edwyn Lutyens. 

This area was also the original site of a circular timber temple (10.6 metre in diameter), positioned on this prominent part of a hillside.  It was excavated back in 1953-4, and many items were discovered abandoned outside the presumed original entrance. Three internal pits contained ox skulls and other bones. There was Iron Age activity also beneath the temple, although religious activity was never actually proved.  The site was dated at 1st - 4th century AD, but most activity was in 2nd and 3rd centuries — this was based upon the pottery evidence found.

Heads nodded and tongues wagged as rumours filtered through Findon saying the later hillside interment was presumably because Edward Thynne could not be buried in consecrated ground.  To prove them wrong, later the hilltop cemetery at Muntham Clump was, in fact, consecrated.

Colonel Thynne then organised for his own parents to be exhumed from St. John the Baptist graveyard and susequently re-buried at the same Burial Mound under their original headstone.  Also the remains of his brother, Thomas, were also transferred to the same hillside and he was given a completely new stone (designed once more by Sir Edwyn Lutyens). 

Thomas had been a Captain in the Royal Navy and rather an eccentric character and great traveller of the world and was instrumental in bringing the Seville gates back to Muntham and enabling me to write my narrative entitled The Mystery of the Seville Gates.  The large cross from his original grave in the churchyard now stands as a fine centre piece at the Muntham Burial Mound.

The question of the shooting and the involvement of Miss Filey has never been completely and satisfactorily cleared up and solved to this day.    I have visited the burial mound over the years and each time it has been very overgrown in the summer months to say the least.

click to enlarge

2010 — The Burial Mound shrouded in trees so that the graves are barely visible

Although the Thynne Burial Mound was originally intended solely for the family members, many who worked on the estate subsequently requested to be buried there.  This was agreed by the Thynne family and this is how a secondary small loyal devoted  “staff cemetery” grew up alongside, but obviously standing just a little apart from those bearing the name of the owners of the grand Estate.

Continue if you would like to read about Ulrica Thynne, The Most Beautiful Findon Débutante.

This is Findon Village — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.