the royals AT CAMELOT

TAKING REFUGE ON A FARM OUTSIDE HILL CREST IN THE 1940S, 200 ROYAL CATTLE ENJOYED A “HOLIDAY” TO AVOID FALLING INTO THE HANDS OF ADOLF HITLER. WELL-KEPT SECRET OR JUST A WAR STORY?

If you speak to anyone who knew Hillcrest 70 years ago, it probably won’t be long before they tell you about the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to their village when she was Princess Royal of Britain. It is a well-established story in the district. It tells that, during the Royal visit to South Africa in 1947, the Windsor family made a special pilgrimage to the farm Albany Grove, in present West Riding, on the edge of Hillcrest below Botha’s Hill. The reason given for this detour is even more interesting – it involves a herd of important cattle reportedly sent to South Africa to keep them out of the greedy hands of Adolf Hitler.

And if you were to express any doubts about the story of these bovine refugees, you would be told about the specially-made plaque which provides all the details of the arrangement and the follow-up visit. You might even be taken to Camelot Estate’s Hathaway Village and shown the trough used by the cattle and the notice beside it, which tells the whole story.

The cattle were of the Jersey breed, peculiar to the small island of that name in the English Channel. Jersey – and several other Channel islands – have been in the possession of the British Royal family (but never part of the British Isles) since William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, conquered England in 1066, to make himself William I.

The story runs that a herd of 200 Jerseys was sent to Natal, where a noted Jersey breeder from the South Coast, Vernon Crookes, gave them refuge on a farm he owned outside the little village of Hill Crest. Then, when Hitler had been defeated, the cattle were sent home, apparently none the worse for their sojourn in foreign parts.

The problem for someone investigating the story in the 21st century is that your witnesses are not old enough to remember seeing the beasts with their own eyes. I banged off some emails to the UK and began interviewing some of my regular sources to test the details. Athol Webster and Hilton Cumming both confirmed that, as boys in the area, they had heard the tale.

Brigit Ramsden even took me to Camelot one damp afternoon, where we inspected the plaque on the edge of Paddy and Graeme Shuker’s front lawn, and skirted a flowerbed to see the water trough behind. Later, Graeme provided me with another lead.

Meanwhile, I had received some responses from Britain. From the Royal estates at Balmoral and Sandringham, to which I had mistakenly directed enquiries before I learned the Jersey angle, came courteous replies that their records were silent on the subject. Then I received a message from Pam Clark, Senior Archivist at Windsor Castle. Pam advised that there was nothing in their archives to suggest that any cattle from any of the British Royal estates had been sent to South Africa during the war.

Now it became vital to follow up on Graeme Shuker’s intriguing tip. I made contact with Nancy Bevan, daughter of Vernon Crookes, who confirmed that the Jersey herd had been accommodated on Albany Grove in the 1940s. She said the animals had the place to themselves, correcting the popular story that the visitors mixed on the farm with local Jerseys. But then came the bombshell. At no time, Nancy insists, did the Royal family visit Albany Grove. There was, in the original itinerary, a projected visit to the South Coast, but that had to be scrapped, for reasons not disclosed.

So it seems that the story of the royal cattle at Camelot, like so many popular legends, is a blend of fact and fiction. In point of fact, the Germans did occupy Jersey for five years, so it is very likely that the sojourn of the beasts at Albany Grove saved them from being turned into hackbraten meat loaf, or perhaps even rinderwurst sausage by the end of the war. Well done Hill Crest! * story hayley dennyson pictures © matthew willman/nelson mandela foundation