NEIL BENNETT reports on a significant name included on this year’s King’s Honours List
No survivors: 39 lives were lost when the Vickers Viking crashed on Holtaheia Mountain in 1961
Among the 1,215 names on this year’s King’s Birthday Honours list, one has particular significance for Croydon.
Rosalind Frances Barbara Jones is awarded the British Empire Medal “for services to the victims of the Stavanger air disaster”.
Few people remember the Stavanger air disaster. Even fewer will be aware of the many heartbreaking stories behind this award.
Rosalind Jones, née Green, was 15 and living in Norbury when her brother Quentin, two years younger, was one of the teenaged pupils from Lanfranc Secondary Modern who died when the aircraft taking them on a summer trip to Norway crashed into a mountain near Stavanger on August 9, 1961. Two teachers, the two pilots and a stewardess also lost their lives.
The Stavanger disaster changed many Croydon lives forever and was full of cruel twists of fate. Rosalind’s family suffered one of the cruelest.
Quentin, 13, had called correctly on the toss of a coin to get the last seat on the aircraft. Four months after the crash, Rosalind’s father, Ronald, died of a heart attack, always blaming himself for letting Quentin go on the trip.
The Lanfranc families had been saving up all year for the school trip and for most of the boys it was the was the first time they had been abroad, or travelled by air.
At the time, it was one of the most shocking civil air disaster in British history, with the Croydon Advertiser telling readers in its editorial: “Rarely in peacetime has an English town suffered such a tragedy as overwhelmed Croydon last week.”
Yet the Lanfranc crash faded quickly from people’s memories, even in Croydon, where the grief hit hardest. The suffering of the families was made worse because the official investigation never found the cause, concluding only that “this accident was a deviation from the prescribed flight path for reasons unknown”.
Tireless research: Rosalind Jones BEM
Rosalind Jones was not prepared to leave it there. She embarked on a lifelong search for answers and a determination to keep the memory of the boys alive. In two exhaustively researched, self-published books, The Lanfranc Boys and The Papa Mike Air Crash Mystery, she explored every available trail of evidence. Eventually, even she was thwarted, partly because not all of the official documents have been released, even after 64 years.
But her efforts gave support and comfort to the other stricken families.
And with the weekend’s announcements of medals and honours, Rosaline Jones’s work has also received a royal seal of approval.
Sue Hayes, whose 14-year-old brother Geoffrey also died in the crash, has welcomed the award: “The Lanfranc disaster affected the families of those who died in many ways, hard to imagine. Compounded by the thought that the cause of the disaster was never fully explained.
“Ros’s efforts in forensically piecing together the events leading up to the crash is a testament to her determination to provide closure, albeit many years later. All relatives still alive owe her a tremendous debt.”
Clive Barlow was head boy at Lanfranc just before the disaster and knew many of the victims well. “The deaths in the Stavanger air disaster affected me very deeply,” he says.
“What Rosalind Jones has achieved in her investigations and publications has helped me, and many of the families involved, to come to terms with what happened. I was so pleased to hear the news of Ros’s award. She would never have sought such recognition, which makes it even more appropriately deserved.”
Barlow is quite right about Jones not seeking recognition. She was so surprised to receive the email from the Honours Committee informing her of the nomination that she thought it was a scam and deleted it.
Fortunately, the committee followed it up with a phone call, by which time Jones only had 12 hours to decide whether to accept the award. She’s now got to organise herself for a visit to the Palace at a date to be decided.
Rosalind Jones’s work helped to build a bond between the people of Croydon and Stavanger, particularly the Norwegian Red Cross whose volunteers brought the boys’ bodies down from Holtaheia Mountain where the aircraft crashed. She also fulfilled a promise to her father to work hard and fulfil her potential, becoming a teacher and the author of many books on the natural world.
Restoration project: the school’s crowdfunding efforts aims to make the area a fitting place of commemoration once again
Earlier this year, Inside Croydon reported on the launch of a fundraising website to improve the condition and maintenance of the Lanfranc Memorial in Croydon Crematorium. The campaign is being run by The Archbishop Lanfranc Academy, the modern successor to the old Lanfranc School, which scrupulously preserves the memory of the lost class of ’61.
That article was seen by Roger Howard, who posted that he was one of the boys who dropped out of the Norwegian trip to go on a cheaper one to Austria.
“Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think of them and the numbness that I felt and the sadness that I still feel,” Howard wrote.
The school will stage its annual memorial day for pupils on the first Monday in July.
The need for a fundraising campaign is an indication of how the Lanfranc disaster has become almost a forgotten tragedy. Rosalind Jones, now holder of the British Empire Medal, has made sure that will not be forgotten.
Her father would be very proud.
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I wonder if the Headmaster who removed the memorial photo of the mountain in Stavanger, from the library, has finally put it back?
An honour well earned!
It is incredible that even 61 years on there’s still uncertainty as to what caused the crash.