Revealed: Sir Keir’s household fortress! The Labour chief talked about rural poverty in his childhood. He did not point out that his grandfather lived in Marden Fortress – and his great-uncle was chairman of the Godstone Conservative Affiliation

Determined to get his political mitts on the essential countryside vote in subsequent month’s Normal Election, Keir Starmer popped up in Lancing, West Sussex this week, waxing lyrical about his childhood, amid ‘rolling pastures and exquisite chalk hills’, simply throughout the county border in Surrey.

Again within the Seventies, Sir Keir informed his viewers at Lancing Parish Corridor on Financial institution Vacation Monday, he had performed soccer on a pitch shared with grazing cows and even earned his first pocket cash clearing stones for native farmers.

‘The togetherness of the countryside. That’s the better of British,’ the Labour chief declared, little doubt making an attempt to neglect that Labour received solely two rural seats on the final Normal Election.

But when Sir Keir is admittedly decided to large up his rustic credentials to voters, the marvel is that he hasn’t gone additional. A delicate rummage within the archives by the Mail this week has lifted the lid on a joyously bucolic familial previous that includes an extended line of gun-toting Starmer males who served as gamekeepers to the landed gentry whereas dwelling on one among Surrey’s most interesting nation estates.

Curiously, Sir Keir made no point out, on Monday, that hardly a century in the past his forebears have been shacked up in a fortress boasting views throughout the Surrey North Downs.

Or that one among his ancestors, one other through-and-through rural man, was a number one gentle within the native Conservative affiliation, a passionate fund-raiser for the social gathering and a adorned conflict hero who as soon as wrestled a shotgun from a pheasant poacher. On one other event, a German former U-boat submariner made off with seven of the household’s most interesting chickens earlier than being caught and handed over to the police for punishment.

Extra, in a second, of this pleasant and engaging pastoral, for Sir Keir boasts a household tree stretching again to 18th Century Lincolnshire the place the Labour chief’s household labored as agricultural labourers in hamlets surrounding the city of Spilsby. 

Sir Keir’s great-great grandfather, George Starmer, was born in 1854 within the Lincolnshire hamlet of Mavis Enderby which even at this time has a inhabitants of solely round 200. 

Like his father earlier than him George labored as a gamekeeper, finally shifting north to Yorkshire to work on land belonging to Fortress Howard, the magnificent stately pile which was dwelling to the Dukes of Norfolk and appeared in two variations of Brideshead Revisited for TV and movie, in addition to the primary sequence of the Netflix drama Bridgerton.

Whereas George and his spouse Matilda moved round farms and estates in Yorkshire, one among their eight sons, Gustavus Adolphus Starmer, moved south to Surrey the place he took up a place as gamekeeper at Marden Park, an unlimited nation property nestling in a chalky valley within the North Downs, which by the flip of the 20 th century belonged to rich stockbroker and baronet, Sir Walpole Greenwell.

Throughout the First World Struggle, Gustavus was a driver within the Military Service Corps however was invalided out and despatched dwelling. For some time he labored because the property carter, fetching coal by horse and cart from close by Woldingham station however quickly returned to game-keeping.

In 1916, he and his spouse, Katherine, and their 5 youngsters, together with Sir Keir’s grandfather Herbert, moved into Marden Fortress, a gothic turreted folly located on a hill in Sir Walpole’s nation property overlooking what the nineteenth century historian Lord Macaulay described as a ‘backyard of Eden’. 

It’s stated that Emperor Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon, was a customer to Marden Park whereas in exile in England and used the Starmer household’s future dwelling as a looking lodge.

Bert Starmer recounted his recollections of dwelling within the fortress for a 1977 recording made by the The Bourne Society, a neighborhood historical past group overlaying north-east Surrey.

The fortress, which was constructed as a ‘taking pictures field’ within the early nineteenth century, stated Bert, was ‘completely sq. with home windows all spherical’ and with a six-roomed cottage on the aspect.

‘The partitions of the large room have been lined with portraits of Inventory Change celebrities,’ he stated within the interview which was reproduced within the society’s 1978 journal.

‘There should have been 50 or 60 such photos, a moderately odd ornament for such a spot. There was essentially the most ornate fire and the ground was of wooden. There have been stairs main up via the center of the ground to the center bed room from which one may attain the turreted tower.’

In keeping with Bourne Society chairman Roger Packham: ‘The fortress was initially constructed as a looking lodge within the early nineteenth century and the property wanted to accommodate gents’s taking pictures events.

‘It stood on a hill on the southern fringe of the property and had beautiful views from there trying south.’

It is unusual that whereas making an attempt to entertain his Lancing viewers this week, Sir Keir did not assume to attract on Bert Starmer’s charming account of life in Marden Park.

Might or not it’s that he feared city-dwelling metropolitan Labour voters may wince on the wholehearted manner the Starmer ancestors had embraced the fox-hunting, cap-doffing methods of the countryside that may sit so uneasily with class warriors? 

Sir Keir’s grandfather’s earliest reminiscence was of being given a dressing down by his father for killing a rabbit in a gin-trap – a sort of spring-operated entice made unlawful in 1958. He informed how the household obtained their water from a spring and saved rabbits in addition to a tame fox which lived in a shed.

‘The fox was with us for about three years however my father shot it after it bit my youthful brother, Reg,’ recalled Bert.

One other time, his father Gustavus introduced dwelling a pair of younger badgers and the kids tried, unsuccessfully, to rear them. They have been later despatched to dwell at London Zoo.

Bert recalled how taking care of pheasants on his ‘beat’ meant that his father ‘would kill or entice virtually every little thing that walks, ran or flew together with rabbits, badgers, owls, moles, jays and magpies.’ 

On one event his father shot what he thought was a sparrow hawk however turned out to be a hen peregrine falcon which was stuffed by a taxidermist and despatched to a museum.

Foxes, nonetheless, have been out of bounds.

‘This was looking nation and taking pictures foxes may need obtained father the sack,’ stated Bert.

The household’s employer, Sir Walpole, he added, had the status of being a ‘pig’ however his son Bernard Greenwell was ‘a particularly reasonable employer’ who saved his pocket filled with ten-shilling notes to reward good service.

A newspaper article from an August 1934 version of the Surrey Mirror, with the headline ‘a cheerful rural gathering’, particulars the annual summer season fete hosted by Sir Bernard which was crammed with ‘ample enjoyment’ and little doubt a lot doffing of caps. 

A backyard produce competitors noticed the Starmers selecting up prizes for his or her potatoes, cabbages and carrots in addition to candy peas.

In keeping with Roger Packham of The Bourne Society: ‘We already knew of the Starmers nevertheless it was attention-grabbing when Sir Keir got here to prominence and that connection was made. Clearly they have been fairly a go-ahead household. At the same time as a gamekeeper, his great-grandfather made a reputation for himself.’

Sadly, the fortress was destroyed throughout World Struggle Two. In keeping with some sources it was destroyed by an air raid. However Bert Starmer stated it was blown up by Canadian troops stationed at Marden Park.

As we speak, all that continues to be of the location is a pile of stones largely hidden by undergrowth, whereas the principle Jacobean-style home in Marden Park itself is now dwelling to £30,000-a-year Woldingham College for women, alumni embrace actresses Vivien Leigh and Carey Mulligan.

Just one very outdated and really hazy {photograph} is believed to outlive of the fortress together with an etching by famed English panorama painter John Hassell accomplished in 1820.

Bert Starmer went on to turn out to be an agricultural wheelwright and married his childhood sweetheart Doris. Bert’s son Rodney, who ran his personal software firm, turned a staunch Labour supporter who, in keeping with locals, used to plaster the home windows of the household dwelling with Labour posters at election time – an incongruous sight in an space which has been underneath Tory management for over a century. 

Rodney and his spouse Josephine named their son, the second of 4 youngsters, after Labour chief Keir Hardie.

Apparently, the Left-wing leanings of this department of the Starmer household have been in direct opposition to these of Sir Keir’s grandfather Bert’s older brother, Gustavus Edward – named after his gamekeeper father – who as a younger man, based the Younger Conservatives within the close by village of Godstone and, in later life, turned Chairman of the Godstone department of the Conservative Affiliation.

He and his spouse Ena, who turned the Conservative Affiliation’s honorary secretary, organised jumble gross sales and bazaars to lift cash for the social gathering.

A lot for Sir Keir’s remark this week that ‘This England has at all times felt far faraway from Westminster!’

Main Gustavus Starmer, who served in Italy with the Surrey Yeomanry in the course of the Second World Struggle and spent 25 years within the Territorial Military, commonly hosted conferences at Curds Tea Rooms close to his Godstone dwelling – a stone’s throw from Marden Park. At one such assembly in 1958, he lamented the low turnout of voters amid hypothesis that many individuals did not hassle to vote, so sure have been they of a Tory victory.

Greater than half a century on, his great-nephew’s social gathering faces the identical blue wall. Godstone lies on the coronary heart of the East Surrey constituency which has been held by the Conservatives since 1918.

The most recent incumbent, Claire Coutinho, was elected in 2019 with a majority of 24,000 after taking near 60 per cent of the vote – 3 times as many as Labour polled.

Whereas Sir Keir has usually made a lot of his hard-up, working-class childhood, he has centered on the ‘small city’ of Oxted the place he grew up along with his mother and father moderately than his household’s rustic life.

His reticence may partially be defined by the truth that, historically, Labour has trusted city-dwellers for help, a mistake which turned all too clear on the final Normal Election when the social gathering, underneath Corbyn, emerged with MPs in simply two out of 124 rural – categorised as ‘village or smaller’ – constituencies; Hemsworth and North Durham. Labour help in rural areas has been on the decline for the previous 20 years.

In 2021, the left-wing Fabian Society went so far as admitting that ‘Labour has a rural downside’ and warned ‘there isn’t a path to authorities with out representing rural communities and enhancing Labour’s vote share in rural seats.’

Hardly shocking then that, final 12 months, Labour determined to pledge to ‘respect’ rural communities. Warming to this theme in Lancing on Monday, Sir Keir stated that ‘anybody who thinks there is not any wrestle outdoors of our cities, let me let you know – they know nothing of the countryside.’

However within the staunchly-Conservative village of Godstone this week, voters appeared unaware of his speech – not to mention his hyperlinks to the realm.

‘I had no concept Keir Starmer had any connections with Godstone,’ stated 59-year-old Denise Sacker, who runs Willow’s Canine Grooming in a courtyard subsequent to the village duck pond.

‘I actually did not know he and the Labour Social gathering are presupposed to be supporting rural communities. I believe it is Conservative round right here.’

On the close by White Hart pub, 58-year-old builder Andrew Weir echoed her feedback, saying: ‘It might take rather a lot to alter the best way individuals vote on this a part of the world.’

And 42-year-old HR supervisor, Leah Thatcher, no relative of the late former Prime Minister, stated: ‘If Mrs Thatcher was standing now, 100 per cent I might be voting for her.’

If Sir Keir has his coronary heart set on successful over the Conservatives rural heartlands, then he may need to brighten up future speeches with a dollop of his household’s personal vibrant Arcadian previous.