Lawrence of Arabia: Colonel T.E Lawrence CB, DSO – Places and Objects of Interest

By Paul Kendall

A journey back in time through objects and locations into the life of one of Britain’s most enigmatic and celebrated individuals.

A twentieth century icon, Lawrence of Arabia, as Thomas Edward Lawrence is more commonly known, spent thirteen out of his forty-six years in the region from which he drew his name. This was as a scholar researching his university thesis, a spy surveying Sinai for the British Army before the First World War, an intelligence officer in Cairo, a liaison officer to the Arabs, and as a diplomat who galvanised and united the Arab tribes into an effective fighting force. He became an explosives expert and a guerrilla fighter who influenced Arab leaders in defeating their Ottoman occupiers.

The story of his achievements in Arabia, derailing Turkish trains and attacking enemy strongholds, has become the stuff of legend. But his life after the disappointment of witnessing the Arabs being denied independence at the end of the First World War is as intriguing as his more famous escapades in the desert.

Uncomfortable with the fame and celebrity status that Lowell Thomas’s lectures brought upon him, after a brief tenure as a civil servant working for Winston Churchill in an attempt to address the failure of achieving Arab independence at the Cairo Conference, Lawrence, the former Lieutenant-Colonel, remarkably sought a life in obscurity. In the years after the war, for example, he served in the Royal Air Force as an aircraftsman and spent a brief period as a private in the Royal Tank Corps under the alias John Hume Ross or Thomas Edward Shaw. He became a competent marine motor mechanic, and was personally involved in the development of the fast RAF 200 Seaplane tender and an armored target boat. He also became a renowned author and could claim literary giants such as Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster and George Bernhard Shaw as his friends.

In this highly illustrated book, the story of Lawrence’s fascinating life is explored through many of the places and objects associated with him, from his birthplace in Wales through to his grave at Moreton in Dorset. Lawrence of Arabia features his places of education in Oxford, sites where he served as a British Army intelligence officer in Cairo, as liaison officer and adviser to the Arabs, even where he fought alongside his Arab brothers against the Ottomans.

It also follows his life in the years after Arabia. Some of the fascinating locations Paul Kendall visits include RAF stations at Calshot and Bridlington, or the Tank Depot at Bovington Camp where he served in the ranks, his cottage at Clouds Hill and the homes of his famous friends that he frequently visited. The objects examined include Arab robes that he wore, his Khanjar, his service rifle, and even the Brough motorcycle which he enjoyed and valued.

This book is not just a journey across Arabia, Britain and Europe, but also a journey back in time through objects and locations into the life of one of Britain’s most enigmatic and celebrated individuals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Jun 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781399071925

Paul Kendall

Educated at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, where he also served as an Honorary Midshipman with the University of London Royal Naval Unit, Paul Kendall is a military historian and author from Kent specializing in the First World War.

Book preview

1

Snowdon Lodge, Tremadog, Wales

Birthplace of T.E. Lawrence

Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in this house in Tremadog (sometimes spelt Tremadoc), Gwynedd, north-west Wales, during the early hours on 16 August 1888, but his birth certificate incorrectly stated his date of birth to be 15 August. T.E. was delighted with this inaccuracy because he was pleased to share the same birth date as Napoleon Bonaparte.

Snowdon Lodge, Tremadog, birthplace of T.E. Lawrence. Snowdon Lodge now provides accommodation for large groups visiting nearby Snowdonia. (www.snowdonlodge.co.uk)

His father was Sir Thomas Chapman, an affluent Anglo-Irish landowner, and his Scottish mother was Sarah Junner. Thomas was married to Lady Edith Chapman with four daughters in Ireland, but his marriage was an unhappy one. Sarah was employed by him as governess to his daughters, but they embarked on an illicit affair. Edith refused to grant him a divorce so Thomas left her and his daughters for Sarah. T.E. was the second of five illegitimate children that they raised and they would call him Ned. His elder brother Montague Robert (Bob) had been born in 1885, Will followed in 1889, Frank Helier was born in 1893 and the youngest, Arnold, in 1900.

Plaque commemorating Lawrence’s birth at Snowdon Lodge, Tremadog. (www.snowdonlodge.co.uk)

Sarah held strong Christian beliefs and felt guilt for the circumstances surrounding her relationship with Chapman. Even though she had committed, in her view, the sin of adultery, she continued to practise her faith throughout her life and through her sons as an atonement. To evade the disapproval of judgemental Victorian society, T.E.’s parents changed their name to Lawrence, raising the family in a nomadic existence moving across the country. During the first year of living as a couple Thomas and Sarah moved to Tremadog to this house which was known as Gorphwysfa (Resting Place) when T.E. was born. The name changed to Woodlands and then later to its current name Snowdon Lodge.

Thomas chose this location because of the close proximity to ports where there were regular sailings to Ireland, enabling him to visit his father and continue his involvement in the administration of the Chapman estates with his younger brother Francis. Five months before T.E. was born, Thomas agreed to an indenture on 12 March 1888, whereby he signed away his interests in the family properties to Francis in exchange for a £200 annuity. T.E.’s father was able to support his family from this private income and would have rented this house, where his family lived during the first year of his infancy.

Thirteen months after T.E.’s birth, the Lawrence family left Snowdon Lodge and relocated to Kirkcudbright in Scotland during September 1889. In 1891 they spent time in the Isle of Man, and then to Jersey before moving to Dinard, near St Malo in France, where they lived until spring 1894 when they returned to England and lived in Langley, Hampshire, in the New Forest for two years. The Lawrences were able to live as a contented family wherever they went. T.E. would later discover his illegitimacy, but when he became a household name, he feared that the family secret would emerge into the public domain and cause embarrassment.

Carl and Anja Borum, the owners of Snowdon Lodge, have commissioned international sculptor David Williams-Ellis to design a statue to be set in the landscaped grounds. The Lawrence of Arabia Bronze will be part of a new Lawrence of Arabia exhibition and visitor attraction planned for development at Snowdon Lodge. (www.snowdonlodge.co.uk)

2

No. 2 Polstead Road, Oxford

T.E.’s childhood home in Oxford

The Lawrence family moved to this address during September 1896 when T.E. was aged eight. Thomas and Sarah Lawrence believed that Oxford was a conducive environment for the education of their sons and they would reside here from 1896 to 1921.

Built around 1890, No. 2 Polstead Road was a redbrick semi-detached house in north Oxford. It contained four floors, nine bedrooms, three bathrooms, two reception rooms, a kitchen, dining room, nursery, study and a cloakroom. T.E. spent his childhood in this house and the family lived here until after the First World War.

The childhood home of T.E. Lawrence at No. 2 Polstead Road, Oxford.

As a boy T.E., at his own admission, became aware of his illegitimacy before the age of 10.¹ Although he did not feel recriminations towards his parents, he felt that he was an outsider from society because of his illegitimacy and his parents’ attempts to conceal that they were living and raising a family in the absence of marriage. As a form of escapism T.E. immersed his attention in books. He was an avid reader and he would regularly visit the bookshops in Oxford. Among the books that he purchased were two second-hand books on Layard’s excavations of Nineveh which would influence his interest in archaeology and Arabia. He was also interested in the age of chivalry and through reading about these subjects he was able to escape into another world.

Plaque denoting home of T.E. Lawrence at No. 2 Polstead Road, Oxford.

The Lawrence brothers received a Christian upbringing. T.E. would later join the Boys’ Brigade and later taught at Sunday School, but in later life he shunned Christianity, unlike his brother Bob, who embraced the Christian faith. Sarah Lawrence would take her sons three times each Sunday to worship at St Aldates Church, where T.E. developed an interest in medieval history from the age of 10. He enjoyed visiting other churches in the vicinity of Oxford, where he took brass-rubbings from medieval monuments. When he was aged 13, he ventured further afield from Oxford on his cycle to churches in England where they had brasses of knights which he would enjoy taking rubbings of. He would return home and display these, some of which were life-sized, in his bedroom.

T.E. demonstrated his leadership potential when playing with local boys. C.H. Hutchins was a childhood friend who lived next door to the Lawrence’s in Polstead Road and later recalled that there was an overgrown orchard where the boys living in the neighbourhood fought mock battles. In a corner of the orchard there was gravel pit which Lawrence fortified and he also created a rudimentary hand grenade composed from flour and moist clay. This weapon was effective and disallowed because it gave Lawrence’s side an unfair advantage. At an early age, Lawrence demonstrated himself to be a capable and competent leader for Hutchins wrote that ‘our side usually won owing to Lawrence’s vastly superior generalship’.²

Thomas Chapman was relaxed as a father, but Sarah was formidable as she was strict in raising her sons and was dominant in the house. No. 2 Polstead Road was a happy home environment for T.E. living here with his parents and four brothers, Robert (known as Bob), Will, Frank and later Arnold. Their mother, despite her austere parenting, said that they were ‘a most happy band of brothers’.³ According to Bob, their supportive parents made No. 2 Polstead Road a ‘home the place of peace that it was’.⁴

3

Bungalow in the garden at No. 2 Polstead Road, Oxford

T.E.’s adolescent inner sanctum

Although the Lawrence family home was large with many rooms, during the autumn of 1908, when T.E. began his second year as an undergraduate, his father paid for a bungalow to be built at the bottom of their garden at Polstead Road where he could have a space of his own to live and study in privacy while at university.

Lawrence’s bungalow at the bottom of the garden at No. 2 Polstead Road, Oxford.

This bungalow contained a bedroom, a sitting room, a kitchen, shower room and cloakroom, with running water, electricity and a telephone connection to the house. T.E. lined the walls with Bolton sheeting to make them soundproof. He lived in this bungalow for two years where he gained some independence, which enabled him to study and read in isolation during his final two years at university. Vyvyan Richards, an undergraduate friend two years older than T.E., recalled visiting him ‘in his own small cottage of two rooms … There he would be on the hearthrug by a peat fire, sometimes face down over a book.’⁵

When T.E. returned to Oxford towards the end of 1913 after the digging season had ended at Carchemish, he brought Sheik Hamoudi (the foreman at Carchemish) and his servant Salim Ahmed, known as Dahoum, home with him. They lodged in this bungalow. After participating in the Sinai Survey, T.E. returned home and spent the summer of 1914 in this bungalow where he wrote and prepared maps and illustrations for the archaeological report of the six-week survey of Sinai and the Negev that he conducted earlier that year, which he co-authored with Charles Leonard Woolley. The work was entitled The Wilderness of Zin and was published by the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1915.

4

City of Oxford High School for Boys & Lawrence Memorial

A plaque commemorates T.E.’s place of education

T.E. received his school education as a day pupil between 1896 and 1907. He attended the school with his brothers and they would arrive in single file on their bicycles wearing dark blue and white jumpers. The building stands in George Street, Oxford and currently serves as the Faculty of History, University of Oxford.

The school, located in George Street, Oxford, was established in 1881 and offered a classical education for its 170 pupils. It had established a good reputation for academic excellence and its low fees meant that it was affordable for Thomas and Sarah Lawrence to send their sons there. T.E. began attending the City of Oxford High School for Boys when he was aged eight during September 1896. C.H. Hutchins also attended school with Lawrence and remembered him to be shy and that ‘he read widely far beyond the scope of the average schoolboy and at an early age was an authority on medieval armour and weapons’.⁶

City of Oxford High School for Boys.

T.E. excelled at his studies, winning prizes each year, the Fifth Form prize for Divinity in 1904 and the prize for Greek in 1905. Despite his mother stating that he did not take part in team sports, he did play once in 1904 for the school’s junior cricket team. He did enjoy cross-country running and in 1906 he came third in a school gymnasium competition.

T.E. Lawrence plaque unveiled by Winston Churchill at the school.

While at school, T.E. was distracted by his interest in archaeology and his fascination with the Middle East. He was permitted to choose a prize and he received two books on Egypt. T.E. would win scholarships from the age of 12 which would reduce his school fees. T.E. preferred his own private study in contrast to the school syllabus. He later said that ‘school was an irrelevant and time-wasting nuisance, which I hated and contemned’.⁷

T.E. did not tolerate bullying of any kind and when he was aged 16, he saw a fellow pupil being mistreated, intervened and wrestled with the tormenter. He broke his leg as they tumbled and T.E. had to miss a term while he convalesced. His mother believed that this injury stunted his growth.

The Reverend Ernest Cox, the Assistant Master at the school, remembered Lawrence because he recalled him to be: ‘self-possessed, purposeful, inscrutable. He was just like other boys in most things, but differed from them mainly in that he gave rise to the sense of hidden possibilities – a feeling that there was a latent something just out of reach.’⁸

A bronze plaque featuring his head, surrounded by images associated with his academic interests, created by Eric Kennington was unveiled at the school after his death by his friend Winston Churchill on 3 October 1936. The plaque was located on the wall of the staircase, adjacent to the memorial dedicated to those former pupils who fell during the war, including his two brothers, Frank and Will. The plaque was relocated to the school’s new site in south Oxford, but returned to the building in George Street in 2010.

5

Château Gaillard, Normandy

Lawrence’s cycling tour of France

T.E.’s strong interest in medieval castles motivated him to embark on bicycle tours of France during the summers of 1906, 1907 and 1908. He would ride a racing bicycle with a high gear which would enable him to travel 180 miles on some days. Château Gaillard, situated on the bank of the river Seine in Normandy, 25 miles-south east of Rouen, built on the orders of King Richard the Lionheart in 1196, was among the castles he visited in 1907.

T.E.’s cycle tours in 1906 and 1908 were conducted alone. On one occasion he told Vyvyan Richards that on one of these excursions to France he was arrested as a spy when he was caught measuring one of the old fortresses that he visited.⁹

In 1907 he was accompanied by his father, who was an enthusiastic amateur photographer. T.E. learned from him how to use a camera, process plates and develop prints, and he would practise his photography skills when he visited Château Gaillard. T.E. was not impressed with the quality of postcards of the site available to purchase and stayed here for an extra day to take photographs. On 11 August 1907, T.E. wrote that ‘Château Gaillard was so magnificent’¹⁰ and wrote of his respect for King Richard I as a military strategist and engineer. Lawrence also mentioned staying in a cheap hotel situated on the banks of the Seine, which ran past the rear entrance to the hotel where he was staying. He wrote that ‘the bathing is excellent, from a little wooded island in the centre of the river’.¹¹

Château Gaillard. (Yves Fohlen)

T.E. was approaching his 18th birthday and this letter revealed his thoughts about Château Gaillard and given that he shared them to his mother, demonstrates that she showed an interest in T.E.’s passion for history and the fact that his father accompanied him on this French field trip shows they were devoted and supportive parents. This letter as well as the many others that he sent to his mother during these trips were written with love and are evidence that T.E. did not resent his mother for her strictness or her encouragement of her sons to lead their lives according to Christian doctrine.

By 1908, T.E. had visited every twelfth-century castle in England and France. He became proficient in climbing roofs and towers in order to obtain the right image to take photos and draw sketches of the castles that he visited.

Château Gaillard, Pt. Andelys and the river Seine, including the wooded island which T.E. swam to, which he referred to in his letter to his mother.

6

Jesus College, Oxford

T.E. enters the world of academia

On 12 October 1907 Lawrence began his first year as an undergraduate reading history at Jesus College and studied here until 1910. His elder brother Bob was already studying at St John’s College and his younger brother Will followed them to university in 1909, which placed an incredible strain on the family finances. This meant that T.E. lived in college for only one term, during Trinity Term, between April to June 1908, but lived in the bungalow in the garden of the family home at Polstead Road during the remainder of his time at university. During that period in college, T.E. lived in rooms that overlooked the inner quadrangle of Jesus College.

T.E. joined the newly established Oxford University OTC (Officers’ Training Corps) during the autumn 1908, where he learned how to use a rifle and a Vickers machine gun, skills that he would use during the Arab Revolt, but apart from joining the OTC, he did not participate in college life or eat in the dining hall. He would not take part in sports, but took pleasure in pursuits that were against university regulations, such as climbing the college roof at night. It is reputed that he would climb and walk across the roofs from Balliol College to Keble College, a distance of a third of mile.¹² Looking at a map of modern Oxford, it is difficult to see how this was done given that Museum Road is the one large obstacle that could have prevented him from achieving this feat. Also, in the night, he would swim in the icy-cold water of the river Cherwell, close to the college grounds. During that term, T.E.’s eccentric behaviour became noticeable. Vyvyan Richards was a fellow student and recalled that ‘there was a mystery in the College about a strange undergraduate who never appeared during daytime but spent hours of the night walking around the quadrangle by himself’.¹³

Entrance to Jesus College, Turl Street, Oxford. Canon E.F. Hall’s room overlooked Turl Street and it was from his room that T.E. Lawrence fired a blank cartridge from a revolver into this street.

The Inner Quadrangle of Jesus College, Oxford.

Richards was assigned to investigate and became a friend. They would discuss theories about pottery and archaeology on New College mound. Canon E.F. Hall was another contemporary and remembered an incident where T.E. behaved erratically at the college, when after working for 45 hours continuously without food, to test his own endurance, he entered Hall’s room in the college and fired a blank cartridge from a revolver into Turl Street.¹⁴

These tests of endurance were in a sense T.E. testing his own physical limits and capabilities as