Toc H and Tubby Clayton
As dim as a Toc H lamp, went the joke. But for World War One soldiers and generations of young
people since, the Toc H club, founded by local
vicar Philip Clayton, was a beacon of hope.
Philip Thomas Byard Clayton was born in Queensland, Australia, on December 12, 1885. Two years later, Philip and his parents returned to England, where
he attended St Paul’s School. He went on to Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied
theology, coming out with a first class degree.
The newly graduated Philip – or Tubby as he became known – entered the church, and in 1910 went as a curate to St Mary’s Portsea.
Soon his life was overtaken by the Great War and, in 1915, he went to France as an army chaplain. It was during the war that his real life’s work began.
Signallers’ code
In December 1915, he opened Talbot House in Poperinge, a club just behind the lines in Flanders. It became known to the thousands of soldiers who found a touch of home there and a brief respite from the horrors of war as ‘Toc H’. This was a reference to the army signallers’ code, whereby the
initials of Talbot House – TH – would become Toc H.
Civvy Street
During the war, hundreds of men committed themselves, should they survive, to entering the church as priests. Tubby’s first task after the war was at the Ordination Test School, established in a disused gaol in Knutsford, Cheshire, where these men were prepared for theological college. He was the main inspiration and was, for a short time, a member of the teaching staff. Already, how-ever, he was planning for the rebirth of Toc H.
This was not to be a simple ex-service organisation, but an attempt to preserve and hand on to succeeding generations the special atmosphere and camaraderie which had characterised Talbot House in Poperinge. It was an ambitious project, but Tubby was determined to carry Toc H into Civvy Street.
In 1922, with the Toc H movement still in its infancy, he was asked by Archbishop Davidson to become the vicar of All Hallows by the Tower, in Newark Street, E1, and to bring new life to an ancient church with an uninterested and dwindling congregation.
At first this looked like a
distraction from his real work. But All Hallows gave him a base, letting him distance
himself from the day-to-day administration of Toc H and gain the freedom to act as a roving ambassador.
He was the vicar of All Hallows for the next 40 years and Tower Hill was his home for the rest of his life.
He travelled the world, renewing wartime friendships and launching Toc H throughout what was then the Empire. But Tower Hill was not neglected. He began formulating and discussing plans to beautify the area and to
create open space. These bore fruit in the establishment in 1932 of the Tower Hill Improvement Trust.
Towards the end of 1932 Tubby sailed for West Africa where he had his first contact with leper colonies. He was deeply moved by this experience, and within six months had inspired 50 people to volunteer for five years’ unpaid work with lepers and raised £25,000 for the British Empire Leprosy Relief Association.
At the start of the Second World War, he established a Toc H Club at the naval base at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. Then in 1941, he was appoin-ted chaplain to the Anglo-Iranian Line and spent much of the rest of the war at sea with the tanker fleet.
In 1940, All Hallows Church was bombed and Tubby’s first post-war priority was its rebuilding – a task which required all his energy and powers of persuasion.
He succeeded, of course. In 1962, Tubby resigned as vicar of the newly rebuilt All Hallows. He remained in Tower Hill, active in both Toc H and the Winant and Clayton Volunteers, until his death, just after his 87th birthday, in 1972.
These days, Toc H is as active as ever, as the pictures on this page show. Volunteers work on a variety of comm-unity projects – running a
children’s playscheme or camp, tackling conservation or construction projects, running a leadership training course
or first aid training.
The charity encourages a mix of volunteers, so that they learn, through living and working together, to break down stereotyped views and make friends from new cultures.