The Challenor family became established in Abingdon in the late 1840s when the young Bromley Challenor moved to the town. He practiced as a solicitor and founded the firm Challenor and Son which still exists. His eldest son, also Bromley and also a solicitor, is known for his compilation of the borough records. George Norman Bromley Challenor, always known as Norman, was a grandson of the younger Bromley. He was born on 9 November 1914 to Marion, née Woodford, and Norman Bowen Challenor, in Sandford-on-Thames in Oxfordshire.

The house in which George Norman was born, Bassimer, had been built by his father, Norman Bowen Challenor, on his marriage in 1913; the house, in Sandford-on-Thames, still exists with this name.(With thanks to Marion Cox)

When Norman senior was killed in Flanders on 31 July 1915, his wife Marion closed the house in Sandford and moved back to be with her parents in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, where her father was a doctor.

After a few years Marion returned home to Bassimer, together with Norman, her younger sister Dorothy and a brother, William Frederick. Norman was educated at home by a governess and was surrounded by cousins from both the Challenor and the Woodford sides of his family. Tennis parties were held at both Bromley junior’s house, The Firs, and at Waysmeet, the house belonging to  junior’s eldest son, also Bromley, and his daughter-in-law, Agnes. They provided much entertainment in the summer.

It seems Norman was something of a party animal, playing golf at Frilford Golf Club as well as all the tennis, which didn’t allow him much time to study for the law degree he was hoping to obtain. A bout of pneumonia in his late teens left him in bed for a long time, giving him the space he needed to get the studying done and which, in later life, he thought of as a blessing. In April 1939, Norman qualified as a solicitor; in June 1999, the Law Society was to issue a certificate to congratulate him on completion of 60 years as a solicitor to the Supreme Court. (In this context ‘solicitor to the Supreme Court’ means able to practice in any court. The meaning of ‘Supreme Court’ changed when the modern Supreme Court took over the legal functions of the House of Lords in 2009.)   

He was promptly taken into his grandfather’s firm of solicitors, Challenor & Son, but by 1941 he was a lieutenant in the army, serving in the Royal Army Pay Corps in Manchester. Although he was offered a regular commission after hostilities ended, Norman returned instead to take up a partnership in the family firm. The timing of this was rather fortunate, as his uncle Oscar, who had offered the partnership to Norman, died within a few months of Norman’s return, enabling him to take full advantage of the position.

When Norman’s uncle Bromley, the eldest son of Bromley junior, died in 1963, Norman took on his responsibilities, becoming the Abingdon coroner, the fourth Challenor to hold this post. However, the area for which Norman was now responsible was far greater than that covered by his predecessors. As well as the locality of Abingdon, as before, it covered south-west Oxfordshire and stretched from Wallingford to Shrivenham. Norman also became a Clerk to the County Magistrates, Superintendent Registrar and Clerk to the Lyford Almshouses Charity, adding to his existing work as Clerk to the Abingdon District Chamber of Trade.

His work as Coroner included very diverse subjects; two inquests in particular he considered especially memorable: one had to decide the ownership of the 3,000-year-old Moulsford torque (a metal neck ring), found in 1960 in a field being ploughed by a farmer. The other inquest investigated the deaths of 17 people in a plane crash in Sutton Wick in 1957which led to questions being asked in Parliament.

In recognition of his high professional standing, in 1979 Norman was elected President of the Coroner’s Society of England and Wales.

When Norman retired as Clerk to the County Magistrates in December 1976, he ended the Challenor family’s century-long tradition of holding this post, as well as that of Coroner; that of Superintendent Registrar had been held by the family for “only” 90 years.

Telegram of congratulations recognising the centenary of the family’s tenure of Coroner.(With thanks to Marion Cox)

The letter received on Norman’s retirement acknowledging the Challenor family’s length of service in the post of Coroner.(With thanks to Marion Cox)

But Norman was not content with with just his professional work. He added more by co-founding the Abingdon Rotary Club together with Sydney Cullen and Eddie Birchal, becoming President for 1949-50. His long association with the Frilford Golf Club culminated in his appointment as a director. The Club had been founded in 1908 by Dr Harry Challenor (a local physician and yet another of Norman’s uncles), A.E. Preston and T.S. Skurray so he was simply upholding tradition by keeping things in the family for another generation.

In May 1956, Norman married Charlotte Ray Stiles, born in Toronto, Canada, having been introduced by matchmaking friends and family.

Norman and Charlotte on their wedding day in Woking, Surrey(With thanks to Marion Cox)

Wittenham Court, Long Wittenham, where Norman and Charlotte lived from 1957 until their deaths in 1999.(With thanks to Marion Cox)

They lived in Wittenham Court, Long Wittenham, all their married life, where their daughter, Marion Charlotte, was born in 1957, and where Norman and Charlotte died on the same day, 30 November 1999, but of different causes. They are buried together in the Woodford family grave in Sandford-on-Thames.

The family grave in St Andrew’s Church graveyard, Sandford-on-Thames(With thanks to Marion Cox)

We thank Marion Cox (née Challenor) for information and photographs.

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