Ashford, Kent

In Kent, Ashford Borough Council in 2004 agreed naming a new residential road in the Kennington area of the town as Christopher Bushell Way despite Christopher having no immediate connection to the town.

The Surrey, Infantry Museum
Following the death of Elizabeth (‘Betsy’) Hope MacLehose, Christopher Bushell’s only child, in 2002 his medals and some personal letters were presented to the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment by the family on 27 April 2003 at a ceremony at the Surrey Infantry Museum at Clandon Park.

Following the amalgamation of The Queen’s Royal Regiment and the East Surrey Regiment in 1959 the combined museum became based in the basement of the National Trust property of Clandon House in Clandon Park to the east of Guildford. The museum opened in 1981 and was later upgraded and in 2011 merged with the the museum of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment and Queen’s Regiment, the enlarged museum being renamed The Surrey Infantry Museum.

On 29 April 2015 a fire gutted Clandon House leaving only the external walls and one room which was almost undamaged. Currently, a salvage operation is underway and it is unknown what damage was done to the Infantry Museum in the basement housing Christopher Bushell’s medals and papers.

Christopher Bushell Prize

In 1923, the Christopher Bushell Prize of books, for Modern History undergraduates, was established at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he read Modern History from 1906-9

Corpus Christi College  Roll of Honour 1914 – 1918

From Pelican Record Vol. XIV No. 3: [ https://www.ccc.ox.ac.uk/Roll-of-Honour-1914-1918/]

Of Christopher Bushell’s fame as a soldier I know no more than the newspapers have recorded; for in his letters he seldom said much of himself.  But from our school-days at Rugby until the outbreak of war I was intimately connected with him as any of those who delighted to call him their friend.  Since he went to France with the first seven divisions we were able to meet on three occasions, one being that of his marriage.
Of Bushell at Rugby I remember little.  At the School House, to which he belonged, the Arnold tradition was rigorously maintained.  Friendship between its members and boys of other houses were few, and these, as a rule, were formed in the XV, XI or VIth, School institutions where Houses met on a neutral field.  Christopher Bushell was intensely loyal to his House.  He did not attain in work or games to a School distinction, and therefore outside his house he was perhaps but little known.
It was in Bushell’s second year at Oxford that we really met.  The men of Bushell’s year at Corpus were so united as to be called “the Push”.  Having discovered his powers on the River he became their acknowledged leader.  It was customary then, and it may be again, for those who lodged in the front quad to find room daily in turn for all members of the College present at lunch.  These heterogeneous banquets initiated the Freshmen into Corpus society, but it was Bushell’s special genius to secure that their embarrassments did not completely overwhelm the tyro hosts.  He knew how to exercise authority with tact and to smooth over the most painful situations.  So it was at the College Dining Club and in other spheres of hospitality.  It was to him that first anxious College authorities looked to preserve a semblance of decorum in the excitements of a College Bump Supper.  They did not look in vain.
On his gifts for leadership the writer remembers that strenuous calls were made when a party of thirteen undergraduates (how few of them, alas, are now alive!) set forth at three sailing craft, of various peculiarities but all unstable, to learn navigation and cooking and to explore the Norfolk Broads.  Bushell was not the most skilful helmsman.  Anthony Simpson was a born shipmaster, and George Willink an apt apprentice.  But it was Bushell who maintained discipline in the fleet.  He saw to it that we dived for the cutlery which, unwashed, had lain overnight on deck, and eventually had pitched overboard.  Standing ankle-deep in a sunny beach, he would forbid strong swimmers in the waves to tempt further the treacherous currents of the Norfolk coast.  It was he who painfully calculated the daily cost of our messing, and withheld the extra sardine-tin which would have brought it above the figure which economy enjoined.
Later on, in London, the Rugby Home Mission Clubs for Boys afforded more serious exercise to his talents.  Perhaps the layman is pat to underrate the amount of exertion which a day’s devilling in chambers demands.  Bushell, at any rate, did not spare himself when it was over.  He threw himself into the practical side of social work in Notting Dale, seldom missing his night in charge of a boys’ club, while he was on the managing committee of the Cavendish Club, and one of the original founders of the Cavendish Association.  Once a week throughout the season he rode to hounds in Essex.  Again, in company with the writer he walked many a weekend and public holiday over the south-eastern cliffs and down the pilgrim-roads, debating the while some question of the day with a vigour that has seldom seemed since the War to have deserved.
He was the most exhilarating of companions.  He knew how to draw out the best in men.  He broke down their reserves of shyness or sullenness, and healed their discontents with the magic of his sympathy.  He was ever admiring the hand of Providence and rejoicing at the goodness which he saw about him.
At Oxford he had not spared time to think seriously of soldiering.  Not until after some months in London did he feel the claims of military service.  Then, without interrupting his other activities, but at some loss of his society to his friends, he proceeded to qualify for and obtain a commission in the Special Reserve of Officers, being gazetted to the Queen’s, in which Roderick Haigh and Colonel Mackworth were then both serving.
There he has since displayed in their full development the signal gifts of comradeship, endurance, leadership, and self-sacrifice of which his College and his friends had seen the promise.  Their fame will enrich the annals of Corpus; to have known their possessor is the proud consolation of his friends.

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