ELLIOTT, Mark
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BDOHP Biographical Details and Interview Index ELLIOTT, Mark (born 16 May 1939) CMG 1988 Career (with, on right, relevant pages in interview) HM Forces (Intelligence Corps), 1957–59 pp 26-32 Foreign Office, 1963-65 pp39-50 Tokyo, 1965-69 pp50-69 Marine and Transport Department, FCO, 1970-73 pp 70-76 Private Secretary to Permanent Under-Secretary of State, 1973–74 pp 76-83 First Secretary and Head of Chancery, Nicosia, 1975–77 pp 84-97 Counsellor, 1977–81, Head of Chancery, 1978–81, Tokyo pp 98-113 Head of Far Eastern Department, FCO, 1981–85 pp 114-124 Under-Secretary on secondment to Northern Ireland Office, 1985–88 pp 125-135 Ambassador to Israel, 1988–92 pp 136-157 Deputy Under-Secretary of State, FCO, 1992–94 pp 158-172 Ambassador to Norway, 1994–98 pp 173-192 I - 1 Copyright: Mark Elliott I - THE FAMILY The Elliotts are a huge tribe, at least if one judges by the national telephone directories. There is a fair concentration of them at the western end of the England/Scotland Border country, where they boast an Elliott (or Elliot, the preferred local version) tartan, and are commemorated in Tullie House Museum in Carlisle as among the most loathed and vicious of the clans of Border reivers. But my father’s family can trace no connection with Scotland. There is a family tradition of some sort of Huguenot origin, but this is not supported by any evidence. However there is abundant evidence of Elliotts in the Wisborough Green area of Sussex, dating back at least to 1454. A plot of land near Wisborough Green was known as “Elyottes” in 1564. By the eighteenth century Elliotts feature regularly in parish records as yeomen, churchwardens and holders of other offices. Thomas Elliott, born at Wisborough Green in 1724 to another Thomas and his wife Mary née Parkhurst, appears to have been the first to establish himself in the village of Rudgwick a few miles north, near the Surrey border. He moved there at about the time of his marriage in 1760 to Susan Chiles. He and his younger brother Parkhurst Elliott seem effectively to have run the Rudgwick parish. Thomas's son, yet another Thomas, was born there in 1765, and married Ann Greenfield in 1787 (on the same day that another Thomas Elliott, probably Parkhurst's son, married Sarah Greenfield - quite a day for the two families). At some stage Thomas and Ann moved to the farm of Hornshill two miles west of Rudgwick, and Thomas is described as “of Hornshill” on his tombstone in Rudgwick churchyard when he died at the age of 79 in 1844. Their eldest son, inevitably christened Thomas, was born in 1790; John and William followed soon after. In the next generation there were seven children. The eldest son, Thomas of course, took over at Hornshill as a timber merchant, while his father remained at the family home, Red House, in Rudgwick; the youngest child, William, born in July 1832, was my great- grandfather. The Rudgwick/Hornshill Elliotts seem to have been people of some substance. In the 1851 census the senior Thomas, then a man of 60, is described as “farmer of 144 acres, employing 7 men and 1 boy; appraiser, corn and seed merchant”. An early visiting card reads “Thomas Elliott and Son - Land and Timber Surveyors”. Two letters from him to William, dated 1867 and 1868, survive; he was still running the Hornshill farm, walking there from Rudgwick, and waxing lyrical about the excellence of the hay harvest in 1867. He was supplying his son William, who by this time had moved to Brighton and opened a fruit shop, with the necessary produce - his 1868 letter acknowledges receipt of a Post Office Order for £3-12s-6d “which make the fruit account quite right”. In the 1867 letter Thomas writes movingly of the recent loss of his (second) wife, and goes on “she is very much missed by the Poor ... she gave away a great deal to the Poor in their sickness or infirmity which I often hear them talk of since her I - 2 Death but I knew it before as she seldom kept me in the dark in anything she did as she had plenty to do it with”. His health was robust, although he had a scare in 1868; “... could not lay down did not go to bed at all for five Nights sit in my Chair one Night & went to sleep Owen Ireland [brother-in-law?] said for about half an hour and when I awoke he thought I must have suffocated I was as black in the face as your Hat until I could spit something up ... one other time Owen thought I had been agoing I was by the Fire in the Parlour & my Feet and Legs became so benum'd all at once Mrs Neale held my Legs in front of the Fire and continued rubing them ... they say I have deceiv'd the Doctor.” He survived into his eighties, dying in 1872. William married Urith (or Yourath) Shelley, from Sudbury in Suffolk. Their three sons were all born in Brighton. My grandfather, Thomas Herbert, was the eldest, born on 29 August 1867; William Samuel Shelley (later known as Shell) followed in 1868, and John Scotchford or Scotsford (whom I remember as my mad great-uncle Jack) in 1870. Thomas Herbert was apparently Tommy to his friends, but in later life (perhaps as a mark of greater respect) became known as just TH. TH decided at the age of fifteen, against the wishes of his parents who presumably planned a commercial future for their eldest son, to become a teacher. He was also an aspiring amateur actor, playing light comedy parts with a Sussex group to such effect that at the end of his period as pupil teacher he decided to move over to acting as a career. But this time parental authority prevailed, and he remained in teaching for the rest of his professional life, albeit with a continuing spare-time interest in the stage. Graduating from Homerton Training College in East London (“one of the finest teachers we have ever had”, according to the Principal) he taught at a succession of London schools, becoming a headmaster first in 1905 at Bow Creek and then moving in 1910 to take charge of the Marlborough School, Chelsea, an elementary school which with 988 pupils was the largest “provided school” in London. He moved on to the Peterborough School in 1917, and held office in several teachers' organisations. He retired in 1932 and moved to Ealing. TH married twice. His first wife seems from one note in my father's handwriting to have been Gertrude Hayllar, although I never heard the name mentioned; they had one son, Cecil, born in 1890, who inherited his father’s taste for and skill at light acting, but like him chose another career - in the Civil Service. Cecil married Audrey Barnes, and they had one daughter Rosemary, born in 1931 and later married to John Harper; they and their children Caroline and David are my only close relations on the Elliott side. After the death of his first wife (apparently after many years of illness) TH married Ada Rowcliffe, known as Judy, in 1909. Interestingly, his father William is now described as “Gentleman” on the marriage certificate. Judy was sensitive about the exact nature of her family business in Tiverton in Devon. I was brought up to believe that they were in farming, whereas in fact it is clear from the records that her father William Charles I - 3 Rowcliffe was a master butcher with a shop in central Tiverton. But William was a pillar of the community, for many years a member of the town council. A newspaper report of his death describes “his thorough independence and outspokenness, and his love of fair play”. These qualities, according to the report, also distinguished his grandfather, also William Rowcliffe and also a butcher. William Turner Rowcliffe, born in 1802, was a prominent Chartist, a Liberal, who “actuated by a sincere wish for the advancement of the masses of his fellow citizens, devoted himself to the cause of freedom of voting and extended political rights”. He was famous for his heckling of Lord Palmerston at the election hustings; “without Rowcliffe”, Palmerston apparently said, “an election at Tiverton would not seem to be an election at all”. His pluck in standing up to a debater of Palmerston's prowess was universally recognised, and on his death in 1874 nearly all the London papers contained articles on his career. Judy was born on 4 October 1882, the second of nine children (three sons and six daughters); her mother, Sarah née Strong, was the daughter of an agricultural labourer. I met only two or three of my great-aunts, and knew well only the eldest, Kit, and her husband Billy Copp in Leamington. The others, in order, were Will, Rose, Fred, Dora, Victor, Winifred and May; Winifred's daughter Kathleen Davies has kept in touch with our side of the family and is a mine of information on Rowcliffe family history. (Rose and Win were still alive in 1972, when Rose had just had a stroke at the age of 86; Fred died soon after the 1914-18 war, having joined the army - HAC - and been commissioned from the ranks, winning an MC in 1916.) Judy was in her mid-twenties when she married TH. She too was a teacher, indeed later a headmistress (at a London school just north of Selfridges).