The Really Rather Remarkable Henry George Follenfant

At 7am on a cold November morning in 1895, George Follenfant said goodbye to his wife Emma and walked out the front door at 279 Cable Street in Stepney. This was his normal daily routine, which always began with an early morning walk to the newspaper wholesalers, where George would collect the morning papers, ready to sell to his customers from his newsagent’s shop.

George, however, did not turn up at the wholesalers. Nor did he arrive at his shop. His family, friends and employees knew something was not right. In recent months his “open and genial nature had degenerated into one of the gloomiest and pessimistic” and only the previous week he had started a conversation with a fellow local businessman as to whether life was really worth living. (1) George answered his own question later that day, when he sat down on a bench under a tree in Greenwich Park, not far from the Royal Observatory, pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the head. This was no cry for help, for upon discovering it had not dealt a fatal blow, George summoned the courage to shoot himself again and this time the wound proved fatal. At 4pm his body was discovered by a parkkeeper, who searched his clothes and found a note, which simply read: “My love, my only love Emma. Charlie, pride of my heart, never put your money in public companies. It was your father’s downfall.” George Follenfant had invested nearly all his family’s money in the Liberator Building Society, which had gone bankrupt in 1892, leaving thousands of investors penniless.

Charlie Follenfant never forgot his father, nor his final advice, and the son he named after his father, Henry George (known as George), would go on to become one of the most successful and highly decorated engineers that Britain has ever produced – although sadly, never heard of. A stiff British upper lip often meant that suicide was only rarely discussed at the time, but the impact on Charlie Follenfant and his family would have been profound – for some it can lead to a downward cycle, but for others it provides a driving force of hard work, determination and achievement – Charlie and his son chose the latter. Charlie Follenfant became a railway engineer, eventually working for the London Electric Railway Company, an underground company that ran what we now know as the Northern, Bakerloo and Piccadilly Lines. In 1929, George followed him, and at the age of 20, he joined the London Underground Group as an apprentice engineer. Alongside his job, George studied at the Battersea Polytechnic, now the University of Surrey, and earned a first-class degree in engineering.

By 1935 George had already become a technical assistant to the Chief Engineer of the newly formed London Transport Board and seemed destined for a fast rise to the top. The ambitions of a certain German dictator however, interrupted George’s career and since, on top of studying and working, he had been in the Territorial Army throughout the 1930s, he was immediately called up into the Royal Engineers. This is the point when the life of George Follenfant stops being merely interesting and instead becomes utterly astonishing.

George Follenfant is one of a highly select number of elite people to have been awarded the full triumvirate of MBE, OBE and CBE. The first of these comes in September 1943 when George is serving in North Africa and becomes the leading figure in the building and rebuilding of the railway lines that funnelled men and supplies to the front line. George’s commendation noted that “it is largely due to his skill, energy and initiative” that the construction has been completed to such success. These were no achievements miles behind the lines though, for the commendation makes it clear that much of the work was in areas at direct threat from the Germans.

George Follenfant was awarded the OBE for rebuilding train lines in north Africa during the Second World War. A vital task undertaken in dangerous circumstances and extreme weather conditions, this would have been enough to make most people’s lives memorable - but George was only getting started.

The OBE comes only eighteen months later, when George pulls off the same miracles, but this time in an even more important, and dangerous, theatre of war – Northern France. Following D-Day he leads a group of engineers into the newly liberated territories and undertakes a series of vital engineering deeds: he constructs new railways in Normandy; repairs lines in Caen; develops the railway from Normandy across the Seine, including the building of a brand new bridge over the river; develops a rail line of communication from France and Belgium; repairs railways in the Channel ports; reconstructs the railways in Antwerp; and rebuilds the Belgium to Holland rail line, which includes new bridges over the River Maas. Any one of these feats in peace time would be seen as a major engineering achievement – George completes them all in less than a year.

By now Colonel Follenfant, George could have understandably taken things relatively easily after the war, but he is still only 36 and clearly has a hunger for more enormous engineering projects. After the war George heads to North Borneo and Kenya, helping them build new railway lines across hugely difficult territory through Africa and modern-day Indonesia. By 1956 however, George had spent nearly two decades away from Britain and he understandably decides it’s time to return home – not just to Blighty, where he moves to Whitstable, in Kent - but also to his first workplace, for his already incredible engineering achievements help secure him a job as the Assistant Chief Engineer of London Underground. George is quickly assigned to head a new project, one that he will work on for the next thirteen years and will see him presented with the final piece of his ‘Triple Crown’ of gongs, the building of the Victoria Line.

Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first reigning monarch to ride on the London Underground on the day she officially opens the Victoria Line. Clicking on the picture takes you to the original Pathé news story about the event.

The Victoria Line was the first new London tube line for over fifty years and since it involved dodging existing lines and yet still connecting with many of their stations, it stands as one of the most complicated and astonishing pieces of engineering ever completed in Britain. Construction of the line began in 1960 and it took over eight years for the first section to be opened to the public – three years after George had become Chief Engineer of London Underground. The final, fully completed, line was officially opened by the Queen on March 7th 1969, who became the first reigning monarch to ride on the Underground on the same day – an event that perhaps the Queen recalled with George a few months later when she presents him with the CBE at Buckingham Palace in recognition of his engineering brilliance.

‘Follenfant’ is a French Huguenot name, meaning ‘foolish child’ – but if ever there was a person who stands in complete contrast to his moniker, it is George Follenfant. After he retires, he spends much of his time painting and writing the official history of the construction of the Victoria Line – a book noted in one review with “to describe this new book as authoritative is somewhat superfluous; with such an author it could hardly be otherwise.” (2) However, despite his achievements, when George died in 1976 there were no obituaries, no newspaper notices, and to this day his name causes no flurry of recognition if mentioned – a fate that would surely not have befallen him if he had not come from a relatively humble background. However, the awarding of a blue plaque to his modest, yet elegant, semi-detached home in the historic town of Whitstable, is a long-overdue recognition of the triumphs of the really rather remarkable Henry George Follenfant.

(1) Eastern Post, November 30th 1895
(2) LURS Underground News, 148, April 1974