The new recruits were trained at Cooden Camp, near Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, where conditions were basic; bell tents for accommodation, the mess halls were marquees and for washing they used wooden troughs and standpipes.
The Eastbourne Gazette published the following article in 1914 on Mr. Claude Lowther to give the public a character study of the battalion’s new colonel.
LOWTHER OF THE “LAMBS”
A Character Sketch: By Sussexian
The career of Mr. Claude Lowther, M.P.., follows the traditions of the great English territorial house of which he is an offshoot. He has been concerned with diplomacy, with the Army, and with politics; and always the Lowthers have had representatives in one or other of these branches of the country’s affairs.
Yet his personality is not that of the typical Lowther. Mr. A G. Gardiner, while regarding, Mr. J.W. Lowther as the greatest speaker of our time, insists that his success is that of “a plain man without a touch of genius, almost without a touch of brilliancy, but with all the qualities of the average man in perfect equilibrium.” Now, Mr. Claude Lowther has more a touch of brilliance and he would be the first to admit that he does not possess, “all the qualities of the average man in perfect equilibrium.” The Lowthers embody to a remarkable degree the love of the open air of the old British Aristocracy; the Earl of Lonsdale is the finest sportsman in England; and the speaker brings to Westminster the freshness of the Cumberland fells on which he loves to hunt. Mr. Claude Lowther, on the other hand, excellent soldier though he makes, belongs, rather to the drawing-room – polished, courtly, a man of exquisite taste, fond of the arts.
He has lived much in Paris; indeed Max Beerbohm once drew him in a cartoon labelled “Mr. Claude Lowther dominating Paris.” It represented the subject with longs legs towering over the roofs of the French capital. He was so popular in Paris that if the English colony there could have obtained a representative in the House of Commons he would never have needed to go to Cumberland for a seat. It is his passion for the picturesque which set him upon buying Herstmonceux just as it had made him select as his home in his constituency a ruined old Border castle long uninhabited and almost uninhabitable until he had adapted it.
THE RESTORATION OF HERSTMONCEUX CASTLE
When it was made known in East Sussex that a gentleman from the north had purchased Herstmonceux Castle with the intention of restoring that historical pile and using it as a dwelling house many men regarded the event with foreboding. They feared that “restoration” in this instance was but another spelling of the word “vandalism,” and it was with very real regret that they gazed upon an army of builders who, as they believed, had come to shear the old castle of those picturesque features with which it had been caparisoned by Father Time. But those who shook their heads did not know Mr. Lowther.
He took the restoration in hand with perfect good taste and a sense of veneration, restoring only as much of the front of the building as would serve him for a dwelling and leaving the remainder of the castle pretty much in the condition in which he found it. The critics were silenced; as a matter of fact they were delighted and the only grumble one now hears in connection with Herstmonceux Castle is on account of the disappearance of the magnificent old tythe barn that once stood near by. The reason for its demolition, I believe, Mr. Lowther has yet to explain.
HIS PATRIOTISM
I think that Mr. Lowther is genuinely proud of his successful “restoration” of Herstmonceux. I judge largely from the fact that many people who have expressed an interest in it have asked by the owner to call and see for themselves what has been done. It sometimes happens that Mr. Lowther gives an invitation of this kind, and then forgets all about it. There are those thus invited who line in the hope that the invitation will, some day, materialise.
If I were to name the most prominent feature of Mr. Lowther’s character I should instantly cry “Patriotism.” With him patriotism is no mere word for love of one’s country; it is almost a fetish. Duty to one’s country should compel a man to give of his best - or a little more than his best – whether he be well or ill. That is how Claude Lowther regards patriotism; and it was this spirit that urged him, soon after the declaration of the present war, promptly to form a Home Defence Company of the men of Herstmonceux and district. Having organised his company for home defence he was yet unsatisfied; his ardent patriotism urged him to do something more and better; to wait for the enemy’s coming into his own country was not, after all, altogether in accordance with his view of a man’s duty in a great war; he must meet the enemy before he arrived.
Therefore Mr. Lowther formed a battalion for service abroad and under his leadership the 1,150 men, now popularly known as “Lowther’s Lambs” will, I do not doubt, bring laurels to the county in which they have been raised.
APPEAL FOR A SECOND BATTALION
The completion of the first battalion, its popularity and the country’s cry “More men” seem to have stimulated Colonel Lowther to further efforts. Read his appeal for a second battalion:
“I call upon every man, with red blood in his veins, to join the second Southdown Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment.”
“You will not be separated!”
“Together (in your own county) you will train.”
“Together you will fight.”
“Together you will die if need be, but together, pray God, you may return.”
That is the Lowther patriotism! It is a patriot appealing to all men wh0 are patriots – men with “red blood in their veins.”
That is why Colonel Lowther has secured his second battalion so quickly and why he will succeed in raising the third he is now asking for.
Herstmonceux Castle today - 2009
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