Runaway Roy was not to manor born

He never quite got over his luck at being transported from the squalor of a Lincolnshire workhouse to the faded grandeur of that magnificent mansion where he was to spend two formative years.

Sadly, Roy died in November last year, at the age of 79.

But fortunately his story has not been lost, thanks to Terry Roberts, who met him as part of research for his own book, Guy’s Cliffe - Recollections of a Country Mansion.

As a result, Terry has generously decided to publish a limited edition of Roy’s autobiography under his original, and surprisingly joyful title, C’est La Vie!

Terry admits: “There wasn’t much joyful about Roy’s early life. He was born in 1931, the illegitimate child of a partially paralysed mother who suffered from fits of mental depression. He was soon taken into care but ended up in the Sleaford Workhouse for adults after running away six times.

As a 12-year-old Roy was required to clean the mortuary and help shave the male inmates. It could have been worse. As he reminds readers there were some workhouses were residents were required to grind down animal bones for fertiliser - desperately gnawing off any scraps of meat they found.

In C’est La Vie! Roy recalls how a kindly Miss Shee had driven him to Warwick on October 31, 1944. The Second World War was still raging but he’d entered another world as they swept up the drive passing beneath the Italian-style arch and coming to a stop outside what looked like a stately home - with peacocks.

Roy was 13 and the majestic mansion and its 15th century chapel was temporarily being used as a base for boys and wartime evacuees.

The house was once owned by the Greatheed family - who’d also built much of Regency Leamington after making a fortune from sugar picked by their slaves in the West Indies.

In wonder Roy wrote: “The verandah was on the first floor of the house and commanded a breathtaking vista of a very long and wide grass drive, lined with tall trees which in turn led to an ornate rose garden with a statue of a black boy holding a large plate...so this was where I was to live?”

And there he did live, under the benevolent guidance of Paul Field, the master of the home - who at one stage wanted to formally adopt all the boys in his care.

Even on that first day regular runaway Roy remembers that instead of being confined indoors he was given half a crown by the departing Miss Shee and allowed to go off to Warwick’s County Cinema to watch Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan’s Desert Mystery.

He went to the pictures with his new friend, Jack, and never wanted to leave Guy’s Cliffe, defending its reputation when he attended All Saints School in Warwick where boys who looked down on the likes of him and Jack just might find themselves tied to trees in the grounds.

Of course, all this was closer to the start, rather than the end of Roy’s story. After the war he was fostered for a time by the Robins family in Albert Street, Leamington, took piano lessons, bought an accordion and sang solo with All Saints church choir.

Roy, who made his home in Milverton, went on to do his National Service in the RAF, leaving in 1953 to take his first job with Timothy White and Taylor (gents’ outfitters) in Leamington.

Somewhere along the line he also went on to qualify as qualify as a teacher for the mentally handicapped, gained a national certificate to coach table tennis and learned to fly. He took his first solo flight from Coventry Airport in a Cessna.

* C’Est La Vie! costs £10 plus £1.50 postage and is available by ringing Terry Roberts on 024 7634 6545 or visiting www.guyscliffehouse.org.uk/books