Four: Captain W. H. Payton, C.M.G., Khyber Rifles, Indian Army Reserve of Officers, later Chairman of the Rangoon Development Trust, Indian Civil Service, Burma; a close school-friend of the novelist J. R. R. Tolkein, and a fellow member of their ‘Tea Club Barrovian Society’, so called because they would meet up to drink tea and eat cake in Hobbit-like fashion at Barrows Tea Room, one can speculate that the creation of Tolkein’s ‘Middle Earth’ had its genesis in their school fellowship

British War Medal 1914-20 (Lt. W. H. Payton. I.A.R.O.); India General Service 1908-35, 1 clasp, Afghanistan N.W.F. 1919 (Capt. W. H. Payton. Khyber Rif.); Jubilee 1935, unnamed as issued; Coronation 1937, unnamed as issued, nearly extremely fine (4) £240-£280

C.M.G. London Gazette 1 January 1945: Wilfrid Hugh Payton, Esq., Indian Civil Service, Burma.

Wilfrid Hugh Payton was born in Birmingham in 1892 and was educated at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and Trinity College, Cambridge; whilst at school he was one of nine members of the ‘Tea Club Barrovian Society’, whose founder and leading light was J. R. R. Tolkien, the future Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, and author of the beloved Lord of the Rings novels. The Tea Club Barrovian Society, so called because they would meet up to drink tea and eat cake in Hobbit-like fashion at Barrows Tea Room near the school, consisted of nine members, including Payton and his younger brother Ralph. A particularly close-knit group, the members stayed in touch after they had left school, and gathered for what turned out to be a poignant final meeting in London in December 1914. Of the nine members, only four, Tolkein, Wilfrid Payton, Christopher Wiseman, and Sidney Barrowclough, would be alive in 1918. The deaths of several of his friends during the Great War, including Ralph Payton, had a big effect on Tolkein, and undoubtedly influenced his writing - one can speculate that the creation of Tolkein’s ‘Middle Earth’ had its genesis in the meetings with Payton and the others of the Tea Club Barrovian Society.

Payton was appointed to the Indian Civil Service in 1914, and was posted to the Burma Commission as an Assistant Commissioner in December 1915. He received a temporary commission with the 1/6th Gurkha Rifles at Abbottobad in September 1916, and was posted to the Khyber Rifles as a Captain, seeing active service during the Third Afghan War.

Returning to Burma, Payton was appointed Assistant Superintendent, Shan States, in April 1921, and was appointed Under Secretary to the Government in February 1922. He was subsequently appointed Chairman of the Rangoon Development Trust in 1937, and was awarded both the 1935 Jubilee Medal, and the 1937 Coronation Medal, in this capacity. Appointed a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in the 1945 New Year’s Honours’ List, he retired in August of that year, and died at Lyndhurst, Hampshire, on 2 May 1965.

Sold with a copy of the Civil List for Burma, September 1944; and copied research.