'The Ruxley Towers Story' by Claude F Luke
In the leisurely days of the nineteenth century, the then Lord Foley built himself of N the leisurely days of the nineteenth century, the then Lord lodge on his richly-wooded Claygate estate. He had chosen the place with care. Claygate village in those days was a charming rural backwater, a longish coach drive from London, screened by common-land from the hurly-burly of the Portsmouth Road, and protected on all sides by the well-kept homes and estates of the nobility.
Ruxley Lodge, as it was originally known, dominated the Claygate scene, both geographically and socially. It boasted fine stables, smooth lawns, topiary hedges (still preserved), a magnificent avenue of rhododendrons, and a vast conserva-tory the envy of the county. Great house parties were held there, and Queen Victoria is said to have visited Ruxley on one occasion.
The building itself began life as a fairly modest, yellow-brick country residence, with simple lines and of the solid, if undistinguished, architecture of the period. And then, suddenly, it underwent a strange metamorphosis. The story goes -probably apocryphal that the noble lord visited Hurstmonceaux Castle and was so impressed by its historic grandeur that he returned to Ruxley Lodge muttering: I must have towers and turrets and gargoyles. Be that as it may, the fact remains that this pleasant Victorian home suddenly sprouted two incongruous towers with turrets fringed with hideous gargoyles poking out their tongues at the astonished Surrey landscape; so that today Ruxley Towers (as it was re-christened) is probably the ugliest building in the south of England, an architectural hash of dignity and impudence.
By the turn of the present century, the outward march of London could no longer be stayed. The building rash crept across the green fields. The noblemen departed from this corner of Surrey and the great homes fell empty or were con-verted to other uses. Ruxley Towers was no exception, and after various vicissitudes, the year 1939 found it in the possession of Mr. Robert Campbell Robb, who had converted it into three or four flats".
About this time, with war imminent, the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (N.A.A.F.I.), in common with other large organisations, had been advised by the Government to move their headquarters from London, and a small reconnaissance party of N.A.A.F.L. officials began to comb the surrounding countryside for a building large enough to accommodate their Headquarters staff.
They found themselves to be rather late in the field; most of the suitable premises had already been taken over by various London business firms. Finally, they came to Ruxley Towers, which, at the time, was being considered as a site for a film studio. In the end, N.A.A.F.I. purchased the entire property outright and on the outbreak of war moved a large section of its Headquarters staff from their vulnerable Kennington offices to Claygate. (The two landmines which fell close in the early months of the air bombardment and shat-tered the windows of Ruxley Towers, came as a sharp reminder that Claygate was only slightly less vulnerable!)
At first the N.A.A.F.I. staff 'camped out with trestle tables and the minimum of comfort in makeshift offices; but, rapidly, conditions became organised, more and more staff were posted to Claygate, until the 64-roomed mansion and 30-odd Nissen huts in the grounds were accommodating some 1,100 administrative and clerical workers.
The calm of Claygate life was rudely shattered and at first there was some resentment at the intrusion of this vast orga-nisation. But N.A.A.F.I. quickly adopted a good-neighbour policy and did its utmost to minimise the disruption of village life caused by its presence. Claygate housewives over 150 of them helped the war effort by working whole or part-time with the newcomers; homes throughout the area were thrown open to provide billets for hundreds of N.A.A.F.I. personnel: while some eighteen houses were taken over as N.A.A.F.I. hostels (today only two remain).
Soon, Ruxley Towers became a small township of war effort. The tallest tower became an important Royal Observer Corps post, manned by N.A.A.F.I. staff; three hundred others formed fire-watching teams. Others joined the N.A.A.F.I. Company of the Home Guard, whose duties were closely linked with those of the Claygate Company.
And from Ruxley Towers was administered throughout those war years the vast and world-wide activities of a Cor-poration whose staff soared from 5,000 to 120,000, whose canteens mulfiplied from a few hundred to over ten thousand at home, abroad and in H.M. ships, and whose trade rocketed from £10,000,000 to nearly £200,000,000 a year.
Today, although peace has brought a run-down in the scope of N.A.A.F.I. activities, Ruxley Towers is still the nerve-centre of a gigantic business the Services' own trading organisation which conducts Servicemen's clubs and canteens from Cat-terick to Korea. There are still some 850 N.A.A.F.I. staff engaged at Ruxley Towers part of the 40,000 staff who com-pose the N.A.A.F.I. family throughout the world; and even today, N.A.A.F.I.'s turnover is exceeding £70,000,000 a year. All profits on this trade, be it noted, are distributed to the Services in cash or kind. N.A.A.F.I. has no private capital, no shareholders, no State grants and no public subscriptions. It is, in brief, the Servicemen's 'co-op-paying its way from its own trading and returning its profits to its exclusive clien-tèle the members of Her Majesty's Armed Forces.
I forgot to mention the ghost. Every tower has one, and Ruxley Towers is no exception. In 1935, Mrs. Estelle Roberts, the famous medium, held a seance at Ruxley and claimed to have seen a figure in a dark cowl and cloak disappearing into a room at the top of the tower. Her spirit control', Red Cloud, declared that it was the earth-bound spirit of a former tenant. To this I must report that I worked for several happy years in the room in which the spirit was seen, and have experienced no psychic phenomena of any kind. On the other hand, two or three members of the war-time Observer Corps -all tough nuts-flatly refused to sleep in the Tower because of various odd happenings.
