Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Lieutenant M. P. Porch, Colonial Service, who served during the Great War as an Intelligence Officer attached to the Nigerian Regiment, before marrying, in June 1918, Lady Randolph Churchill, thus becoming the step-father to the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, M.P.

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (14158 Tpr: M. P. Porch. 47th. Coy. 13th. Impl: Yeo:) suspension post re-pinned; 1914-15 Star (Lieut. M. P. Porch); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. M. P. Porch), mounted as worn and housed with the recipient’s related miniature awards in a fitted case, about extremely fine (4) £800-1200

Montague Phippen Porch was born in Glastonbury, Somerset, in 1877, three years after his future son-in-law, the son of Reginald Porch, Esq., of the Bengal Civil Service. ‘Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he interrupted his studies to serve in the Boer War with the Middlesex Yeomanry, and after returning to Magdalen to take his degree he travelled widely and spent a number of years in West Africa. In 1906 he was offered a job in the Colonial Civil Service, and was assigned to Nigeria as a Third-Class Resident. (Coincidentally, the Parliamentary Under Secretary for the Colonies at the time was Winston Churchill M.P.). In early 1914 he was invited to the wedding of his colleague Hugh Frewen, who was being married in Rome to the daughter of the Duke of Mignano. Also invited was Lady Randolph Churchill, the mother of the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, and the groom’s aunt:
‘The wedding party was held at the Grand Hotel. Hugh introduced Jennie to a friend of his, Montague Porch, a young man serving with him in the Colonial Service in Nigeria. He was very handsome, gloriously moustached, had a slim figure, and prematurely white hair.
“I can remember still the first moment I saw her... she was sitting with some friends. She wore a green dress. Was it long or short? I don’t remember. But she looked very beautiful.” Porch asked her to dance. Jennie [Lady Randolph] smiled and said; ‘I think you’d better go and dance with some of the younger girls.’ He did not persist. But the following day, the Duchess of Sermoneta invited him to lunch at her palazzo, and Jennie of course was there too. “We met again”, he remembered. “We met a lot, though she was only there for a fortnight. We looked at monuments a lot, and talked a lot.”
On the eve of World War I, Jennie had written what he said was “a wonderful letter” to him. Since then he had become a Lieutenant in the Nigerian Regiment of the Cameroons Expeditionary Force, and now in early 1916 he was back in England on leave. Jennie was not in the mood to discourage him, and they saw a great deal of each other in a short time. After Porch returned to his Regiment, Jennie wrote to her sister Leonie: “I’ve met a young man I shall probably marry.”
Two years later Montague Porch was home on leave again. He had had time to think about Jennie and to decide that he still wanted to marry her. “I don’t think I remember proposing”, Porch said. He and Jennie had been invited to visit Leonie at her castle in Ireland, and “by the time we got to the castle there was an understanding”. They stayed there for two weeks, deep in the peace of the Monaghan forests, overlooking the silent lake, and Leonie told them, “You look like a very happy and comfortable couple.”
The wedding on 1 June 1918 was unheralded and simple. They arrived at the Registry Office in Harrow Road, London, quite unnoticed. Porch remembers exactly what Jennie wore: “A grey coat and skirt and a light-green toque. She looked very beautiful.” Winston was the first to sign the register as a witness, and then he told Montague, “I know you’ll never regret you married her.”
“I never did”, Porch said many years later.
Porch wrote to Winston that he found it incredible that he should be allowed so much happiness when the world was in anguish. He regarded this marriage as the most important step in his life, and it was not taken in the dark. “I love your mother”, he wrote, adding, “I can make her happy- her difficulties and obligations from henceforth will be shared by me so willingly.”
She was not allowed to accompany her husband to Africa. Civilian travel was restricted for the duration of the war, and the government did not even permit Porch to make an official request to have Jennie go with him. A West African newspaper urged that Jennie be permitted a passport, saying that Nigeria needed Jennie’s “brains and push” to help right some of the country’s injustices. Reporters also observed that Jennie “spent many hours trying to persuade authorities to give her a passport”, although influential friends had told her that it was hopeless.
After the War ended Porch resigned from the Nigerian Civil Service, returned to London, and he and Jennie settled down to married life. Years afterwards he said, “We had a very happy time together. There was never a dull moment.” However, after a year of fun and interesting people, he now wanted to take on some work of his own. Moreover, he and Jennie needed money. But his qualifications for a career were few. His only real knowledge was of Nigeria. But for a man who had knowledge of it, Nigeria was full of potentially profitable investment opportunities. His step-sons Winston and Jack decided to finance his exploratory trip there.
Porch left for Nigeria early in 1921. Shortly after he left Jennie wrote to him a note that he has always treasured: “My darling, Bless you and au revoir and I love you better than anything in the world and shall try to do all those things you want me to in your absence. Love me and think of me, your loving wife, J.” (Lady Randolph Churchill, by R. G. Martin refers).

In May 1921, shortly after Porch had left for Africa, Jennie fell down a friend’s staircase, breaking her ankle. Gangrene set in, and her left leg was amputated above the knee on 10 June. Out in Nigeria, Porch finally received the news and immediately prepared to return to London. But he was too late. Following a haemorrhage of an artery in her thigh caused by the amputation, and whilst Porch’s ship was still at sea, his wife died at home in London on 29 June. She was buried in the family plot at St. Martin’s Church, Blaydon, next to her first husband Lord Randolph Churchill, and in the shadow of the Churchill family’s ancestral home of Blenheim Palace.

Devastated by the death of his first wife, ‘Mr. Porch re-married, in 1926, Donna Giulia, the only daughter of the Marquess Patrizi della Rocca. They lived in Italy until her death, in 1938, when he returned home to live quietly in Glastonbury. Mr. Porch was an immensely knowledgeable archaeologist and after the First World War he went to Egypt and worked with Flinders Petrie who was excavating the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. He crossed the Sinai on camel looking for man’s early implements. On his return to Glastonbury Mr. Porch, whose mother’s family, the Austins, had owned the Abbey Ruins and much of the surrounding land, became a valued member of the Glastonbury Antiquarian Society and was one of the Society’s vice-presidents.’ (recipient’s obituary in the Bristol Evening Post refers).

Known as the ‘Squire of Glastonbury’, Montague Porch died in November 1964, and in his will left a portrait of his first wife which was hanging proudly in his house to his illustrious step-son. Sir Winston though did not live long to enjoy it, dying two months later on 24 January 1965.