Sir George Douglas Dixie

• General Notes
  • George Douglas Dixie was educated at the Roman Catholic colleges of Beaumont and Stonyhurst and after serving as a midshipman in the Navy was commissioned as a lieutenant in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. In 1911 he published his “Historic Gleanings in three Border Counties – Dumfries, Kirkcudbright and Wigton"
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    By Margaret the daughter of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Applegirth whom he married in 1902 he had two daughters and one son. The older daughter, Maria Margaret, married Lionel Otway Andrews in 1927 when she was twenty and had four children, the youngest of whom was a son, Simon Willoughby. Her sister Frances Dorothy   married Ernest Riley Kirby in 1944.
    
    Sir George Dixie lived at Casalands House, Dumfries, and when he died – on Christmas Day 1948 – was succeeded by his son, Alexander Archibald Douglas Wolstan Dixie, the thirteenth and present baronet.
    
    Although no more than nine years old when the family home at Bosworth was sold, Sir George is reputed never to have forgiven his father for doing so. As mentioned earlier (p.31) the house dates from the end of the 17th or beginning of the 18th century but unfortunately the name of the architect employed by the Dixies – a practitioner of some distinction, one would judge – is unknown. The two-storeyed house he designed is of mellow brick with a hipped roof of Swithland slates and has tall sash windows. The entrance is in the west front which had seven bays with a central pediment supported by Corinthian pilasters and enclosing a cartouche and garlands carved in stone. The south front of the eleven bays, has a similar pediment but no pilasters. This dignified, symmetrical exterior appears to have suffered no change since it was built. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, however writing in 1960, says that the house was “much interfered with in 1888 and apparently later”. He adds that the interior was “almost entirely altered, lavishly but incorrectly.” This leads one to suppose that the mansion was still intact when sold by the Dixies in 1885 and that the internal work done by their successors is responsible for Pevsner’s strictures.
    
    Outwardly at least, the house is still the “pretty embellishment to Market Bosworth” described by Throsby in the late 18th century and probably looks very much as it did when Mrs Pochin’s deer roamed the stretch of parkland between the south front and the Leicester road. Professor W.G.Hoskins in his “Heritage of Leicestershire” speaks of the Hall as a fine piece of English Renaissance of Queen Anne’s time and commends various subsidiary features; the water-tower, the gateways and the garden walls. He adds a special word in praise of the craftsmanship of the wrought-iron gates.
    
    It was Charles Tollemache Scott Esq who bought the estate from the Dixies in 1885. Some twenty-seven years later he was sued by his daughter Winefryde for the sum of £40,000 which he had received by his marriage with her mother, Lady Agnes Dysart, and which was tied up in the estate. The suit failed and in 1918 the property was sold to Sir Arthur Wheeler who in the same year sold it to Robert St. M. Delius Esq. But no more than fourteen years later in1932 – Mr Delius put the property up for auction and it was bought by the County Council. It was then adapted for use as a hospital and residential infirmary and has fulfilled this purpose ever since. The manorial rights, a dairy farm and 167 acres of gardens and parkland were included in the sale. The catalogue shows that, despite Pevsner’s remarks, the interior was least spacious and impressive. Among the six reception rooms were a Saloon 40ft by 24ft and a “Justice room”, and there was a suite of State Rooms on the first floor.
    
    As a schoolboy Bernard Newman knew Bosworth Park well and describes it as “square miles of lovely turf with occasional spinneys and ponds”. The Park extended southwards almost as far as the actual battlefield of Bosworth. This battle, in spite of its tremendous dynastic importance, was numerically a comparatively small affair and was fought within the triangle formed by Sutton Cheney, Shenton and Stoke Goulding. The traditional spot where King Richard III raised his standard on 22nd August 1485 is a spinney lying within Bosworth Park and known as King Dick’s Camp. A vivid account of the battle and the movements of the troops involved may be found in the concluding chapters of “The Killing of Richard the Third” by Robert  Farrington , 1971.
    
    A few years ago Sir Wolstan Dixie, the present baronet, set aside a considerable area of that portion of the Park still in Dixie hands for public use and recreation. This stretch of parkland, which proved a very popular resort, is now owned and administered by the County Council.
    
    After the death of the Rev. A. B. Evans in 1854 the fortunes of the Dixie Grammar School fluctuated alarmingly but with the appointment of the Rev.L.H. Pearson as headmaster it began to prosper steadily. His regime lasting twenty-eight years, ended in 1914. During that time the staff had been increased, many structural additions and alterations made and the number of pupils – some of them boarders – rose to eighty. Girls were officially admitted in 1933 during the rule of Ford Smith, the School’s first non-clerical headmaster and a woman replaced one of the male teaching staff. William Gosling became headmaster in 1943 and shortly afterwards, under the 1944 Education Act, the County Council took over the School. It retained its own scholarships, however, so that it became possible for a local boy to win either County Scholarships or a Dixie Exhibition at Cambridge. The school had one hundred and twenty pupils when Gosling arrived and over four hundred when he retired in 1964.
    
    Today, a Secondary Modern School for six hundred pupils at Bosworth and a new Upper School at Desford for over twice that number have been established and the old Dixie School, as such, has been closed; a majority of its Governors reluctantly decided that it was better to let it be absorbed into the new scheme than to see it die on its feet as a Grammar school with perhaps fewer than a hundred pupils left to it. For time being, however, the old School buildings are still in use, serving as a High School extension of the Secondary Modern School.
    
    Although the old School’s Board of Governors is now a thing of the past, the Dixie Foundation Trustees, of whom the present baronet is one, meet at least three times a year. This body has considerable funds at its disposal and, in suitable cases, will give financial assistance towards the schooling or further education of local boys and girls.
    
    It should be mentioned that among those educated at the School was Robert Burton, author of “The Anatomy of Melancholy “ a work, incidentally, in which Johnson found solace during his unhappy sojourn at Bosworth. Members of the Sitwell family also were at the Dixie School.

Details of George's family with Lady Margaret Lindsay Jardine