John Norton-Griffiths lived at Mole Cottage in Westhumble.
Before the war, he had mined for gold in southern Africa, served in the Boer War, and developed railways in Angola and Chile.
In 1914 he raised the 2nd King Edward’s Horse at his own expense and was commissioned as a major. Using his engineering experience he built many fortifications on the Western Front (where he was known for touring the trenches in a battered Rolls-Royce loaded with wine).
His proposal that his tunneling workers might be useful to the war effort was ignored until the Germans wiped out 800 men using mines in France. Norton-Griffiths’ ‘Manchester Moles’ sewer men became the British Army’s first tunneling company in 1915. In 1916 he was sent to sabotage Romanian oil fields – destroying 70 refineries. He was awarded the DSO in 1916, knighted in 1917, and promoted to Lt Colonel in 1918.
After the war, he became a Conservative MP. His daughter Ursula was the mother of Liberal politician Jeremy Thorpe.
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