Thomas Challen (Tom) Greenfield BSc, A.M.Inst CE, M. Inst W.E. (1893-1960)
A Scot from Edinburgh and Elie in the East Neuk of Fife, Tom made his lifetime career in Water Engineering. After attending Merchiston Castle School, he took his BSc at Edinburgh University where his father, William Smith Greenfield, (1846 – 1919) had been from 1878, the Professor of General Pathology. (William Greenfield’s family home of ‘Kirkbrae’ built for him in Elie, is now a holiday let development ‘The Golf Court‘ Google Maps Picture)
(An earlier ancestor, Tom’s Great Grandfather, was London’s Master Builder Seth Smith (1791 – 1860). Smith’s daughter married Thomas Greenfield, father of William Smith Greenfield, father of Tom Greenfield. Smith invented the word ‘Pantechnicon’ – the facade of the building he built with this name still stands in London.)
Whilst at Edinburgh University Tom was an active member of the O.T.C. obtaining the ‘Certificate B’ qualification in November 1913. After gaining his degree in August 1914 he joined Alexander Binnie, Son and Deacon, Water Engineers as a pupil and worked on the Alwen Reservoir, 1913-1914, before enlisting for War Service in late 1914 aged 21.
War Service
Tom Greenfield was ‘Gazetted‘ and commissioned into the Royal Engineers on 16 December 1914.
In a letter to his Father (Oct 23rd 1914) he explains that his first application in wartime had been to enrol as a Private in the Engineer Unit, 1st Field Company of the Royal Naval Division, but the papers for that were summarily (and quite possibly, illegally) torn up two days later, and by Oct 25th 1914 he was reporting to his somewhat confused Father that his Officer’s commission was instead to be with the Army. (He had been roundly advised after dining with a forthright Colonel Skinner of the Royal Engineers, that he ‘should chuck the Naval thing’). He spent time in camp from January 1915 at Brompton Barracks in Chatham, where he learned to ride a horse, and received his own basic military training there and at Rye. He was later responsible for managing the training of new recruits to the Battalion.
As a 21 year old Lieutenant in the Corps of Royal Engineers Regiment on 19 November 1915, he was badly wounded in the shoulder and lung. Initially treated and operated on at the 26th Field Ambulance (history), and then transported by river barge from Bac St Maur over several stressful days at Christmas 1915 to “Officers Hospital, No 10 Stationary, B.E.F.” at St Omer. Then eventually by train to Duchess of Westminster’s (No.1 Red Cross) Hospital at Le Touquet (Le Touquet-Paris-Plage). He was in hospital in France for two months waiting for his condition to improve sufficiently to allow a safe passage home. His older Brother, Godwin Greenfield (1884-1958), then a doctor working with the Royal Army Medical Corps in France, visited him several times and was able to report back to the family on Tom’s behalf. Later he was repatriated to Sussex Lodge Hospital in Regents Park. He then undertook recuperative treatment in Scotland including a further operation in Summer 1916 at Bangour Hospital. He was eventually invalided out of the service in 1917.
Samples of Tom’s letters, one describing the death and funeral of a colleague working nearby and others describing his injury and later time in hospital at Bangour (with a cartoon drawing), are shown below. His Father carefully transcribed some of Tom’s correspondence in his own handwriting, to circulate separately to the family, and one of those is also shown below. The set of wartime and other letters to his Father, and also those from his Doctor Brother Godwin and others commenting on his general condition after being wounded, kept carefully through the years by Edith, is available as a transcription edited by his Grandson, David Clover. (Acrobat Reader Recommended)
Return to civilian life
After much time in hospital and regaining his strength he was employed in 1917 as a surveyor in connection with the proposed Lochaber Power Scheme. In 1918 Tom was appointed Resident Water Engineer at the Blaen-y-cwm reservoir for the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron and Coal Co., Ltd, near Beaufort, South Wales from 1918 to 1922 which is when he met and befriended the Llewellyn family at the Beaufort vicarage. Edith and Tom were married in 1920.
Edith carefully preserved Tom’s WW1 Battledress uniform (picture above), but on her death in 1999, being too bulky to transport on the plane home, it was given to a local antique shop to sell as a potential theatrical costume.
Working Life
After a period in South Wales as Resident Engineer at the Blaen-y-cwm reservoir near Beaufort (1917-1922), in 1923, Tom Greenfield and Edith moved to Barnsley as Assistant to the Waterworks Engineer at a starting salary of £400 – some £18,277.54 in 2019 prices. (Sheffield Independent – Wednesday 12 December 1923 P 5 col. 7)
His medical condition was not good as a result of the injury, and his doctors eventually recommended that he live in a less polluted environment. So in 1930 after making several unsuccessful applications for posts, including the Senior Waterworks Engineer post at Barnsley and a Scottish vacancy in Perth (Dundee Courier – Friday 23 March 1928 P12 col 3), he and Edith moved to the clear air of the Isle of Man where on 14 November 1930 Douglas Corporation Water Committee (after some heated discussion as to whether the post of Water Engineer was needed at all) appointed from the 43 applicants, Mr Thos. Challen Greenfield, B.Sc., M.I.C.E., A.M.Inst.W.E., deputy Water Engineer to Barnsley Corporation, to be Water Engineer for Douglas, in succession to Mr Alan Boothman, A.M.I.C.E., at a salary of £400 a year rising to £550 after 7 years (£26,342 to £37,747 at 2019 prices). He served there for 29 years, and though, through his injury, not a fit man, as Captain T.C. Greenfield, he took part as Company Commander of the Manx Home Guard in the Second World War (Isle of Man Times, Saturday, August 01, 1942; Page: 5 and Mona’s Herald, Tuesday, March 24, 1959; Page: 5).
Severe illness in 1948
The wartime injury had caused damage that led to repeated infections. After a dramatic flare up in the 1948, which meant an emergency transfer to the Manchester Royal Infirmary, he was successfully treated with the then newly-available drug Penicillin .
Douglas (later I.O.M.) Water Board
Tom was initially Chief Water Engineer to the Douglas Water Board, building and developed many of the installations that are still used on the Island.
This included service reservoirs, dams and pipework to serve at first the Douglas area and later from 1947, as Engineer Manager at the All Island Water Board.
The Corrany Scheme
Completed in 1954, the scheme was designed and managed by T.C. Greenfield to augment the water supply in Ramsey by bringing up to 500,000 gallons of water a day from the Corrany River to the Ballure reservoir which had fallen to dangerously low levels in 1950.
Retirement
T.C. Greenfield retired in 1959 and died in 1960 at the age of 67.
The Greenfields 