Page 143 - Wish Stream Year of 2018

in the East Anglia region. In the mid-1970s Trace left television for good, working as storekeeper and general manager of a factory in Hemel Hempstead saying; “I’ve always been good with my hands and making things – this is just the job
for me.” Later he worked in the press office of SSAFA before a final foray into radio as a regular guest on Radio 2s ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ Diagnosed with cancer, Christopher Trace died in 1992 at the age of 59.
Those who have knowledge of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst are probably aware that the original building (now known as Old College) (Photo 1) was completed and opened to cadets in 1812. But few probably know very much about how and why it came to be located where it is, and who designed and built it.
Location
The new Royal Military College, primarily the brain child of Lt Col (later Maj Gen) John Gas- pard Le Marchant, was initially opened at the turn of the 18th/19th centuries at two temporary sites: in 1799 in High Wycombe (the Antelope Inn) for the Senior Department – the embryonic staff college, and in 1802 in Great Marlow (Rem- nantz House) for the Junior Department – the college for officer cadets (where the minimum entry age was 14).
In 1801 the Government had begun to look for a suitable site for the new College to be housed in a new purpose-built building. In the same year the Duke of York’s committee announced that ‘a suitable piece of ground had been found near Blackwater (Sandhurst)’ and that ‘the proprietor was disposed to sell the same for about £8,000’ (around £352,000 in today’s money*). The Sand-
Photo 1
Ian Pattison
hurst Estate (some 500 acres in size) was duly purchased and Parliament subsequently voted £147,000 (around £6.5 million in today’s money*) for the building of the necessary College prem- ises, to include accommodation for both Senior and Junior Departments.
The stated reasons why this particular site was chosen were:
• The uncircumscribed extent of land, which admits of the buildings being so placed as to avoid a neighbourhood injurious to the morals of the cadets, and which allows space also for military movements, and the construction of military works without interruption.
(the town of Camberley, initially called ‘Cam- bridge Town’, did not exist then)
• The opportunity afforded of military instruction from large encampments of troops, which, when they are formed in this country, are gen- erally situated in the vicinity of Bagshot.
(this referred to the Militias, which were the ‘reserve’ forces of the 18th/19th centuries)
• The low price of land, with the vicinity of water carriage by the nearby Basingstoke Canal (this had been recently completed in 1794 and ran
The builders and building of Sandhurst (Old College)
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