At the time of writing, Hay House in Hythe is in the news. A grade II listed building, owned by Folkestone and Hythe District Council and now comprising six flats, it is likely to be offered for sale. It is the last remnant of the barracks which, according to Cobbett, covered half Hythe during the Napoleonic wars. The house was bought in 1809 as a residence for the Commandant of the Royal Staff Corps and Director of the Royal Military Canal, Lt. Col. John Brown. It was next to the Royal Staff Corps barracks. The Colonel was a military engineer who had conceived the idea of the Royal Military Canal and under his direction the Royal Staff Corps were responsible for its construction. He lived at the house, then called just The Commandant’s House, until his death in 1816. The Royal Staff Corps was disbanded in 1837.
Hay House today. This would have been the back of the house before the road was built.
Sixteen years later, the War Department was looking for a site for its latest project – a training centre to instruct troops in the use of the rifle.
Until then, the Infantry Regiments of the British Army were equipped with a musket known as Brown Bess, which in various forms had done service since the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. Only the Rifle Brigade, raised in 1800 and armed with the Baker rifle, and the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, raised in 1815 were issued with rifles. Rifles were slow to load and though more accurate than Brown Bess, it was not thought practicable to issue them generally. But in 1849, French Army captain Claude-Etienne Minié invented a bullet which would enable rapid muzzle loading. The rifle he produced to be used with the new bullets became, in theory, general issue to the British Army, but progress was slow.
Capitaine Minié
The new rifle was undeniably more accurate and had a greater range than the musket, but accuracy depended on a range of factors including elevation, the strength and direction of the wind, and ballistics. True marksmanship was once again possible since the longbow fell into disuse. Shooting ceased to be a drill and became an art.
Clearly, the art needed to be taught, and it was decided in 1853 that a corps of experts should be formed. The site chosen for the new, and incongruously named the School of Musketry, was at Hythe. The Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, Lord Hardinge, and the Inspector General of Fortifications, Sir John Burgoyne, visited Hythe and pronounced it the most suitable place in England for the School. The War Department purchased from Hythe Corporation 200 acres of beach for use as firing ranges, where stray bullets could fly harmlessly out to sea. And the Commandant’s House still stood.
All that was needed was a Commandant and he arrived in Hythe in June 1853. He was Lt. Col. Charles Craufurd Ruse Hay of the Green Howards, otherwise known as the 19th Regiment of Foot and although specifically selected for the job, he did not particularly want it. He had hoped to be sent to the Crimea. He brought with him Lt. Currie and Colour Sgt. John M’Kay as an instructor. He also arranged for another man, nearing retirement, to come to Hythe as his civilian Mess Master: George Cobay. George and his family were to play an important part in Hythe life over the next 70-odd years.
Charles Craufurd Ruse Hay
Hay had been born in Maidstone in 1807, the son of General Sir James Hay and his wife Isabella.. He joined the 19th Regiment of Foot as an ensign in 1814 aged 16 and served in Great Britain, achieving regular promotion. In 1844, he married Ellen Francis Ashworth, the daughter of another General. They had a family of five children, two of whom were born in Hythe. Hay was an excellent shot, which must have contributed to his appointment. There is a story that he would fire from St Leonard’s churchyard at targets on the ranges a mile away. This seems unlikely. However, Hans Busk another rifle expert and author of several books on the subject wrote that ‘The Colonel would stand with his back to a target eleven hundred yards away, turn on a word of command, whip up his rifle and hit consistently within three feet of the centre of the bull’. This was compared to standing at Oxford Circus and hitting a tea-tray in Tottenham Court Road. He was also a keen cricketer and the owner of a yacht and of a small but successful racing stud.
His first task was to find a rifle to replace the Minié, with which there were a few problems. The first tests were carried out in October 1853 and the Enfield chosen as the standard issue. Hay recommended some improvements, all of which were adopted. In 1857, the School undertook an exercise to compare the Enfield and Whitworth rifles and judged the latter to be far better.
The School’s reputation for excellence spread and a similar system was set up in India in 1856. Hay’s reputation spread too. It was written of him: ‘None but an enthusiast would have stood from dawn to dark, as he daily did, on the bleak Hythe shingle, exposed to the piercing wintry blast that swept across it, while he tested endless rifles with his own hand.’
The bleak Hythe shingle, which is quite pleasant on a sunny day.
The school was even mentioned in a comic verse 1858:
And when one’s done with depot
And expects to have one’s pay
One’s ordered off to Musketry
At Hythe with Colonel Hay.
When with that -hem! – Enfield Rifle
One must practise till, at nights,
Instead of sleeping soundly
One keeps on taking sights.
That year, 199 officers and 777 men were trained and Hay was made Major-General and Inspector General of Musketry.
The next year, he became a member of the newly-formed National Rifle Association., recognising its aim of creating ‘a nation of marksmen’ through its shooting competitions. Thanks to his encouragement the Association’s first Imperial Meeting was contested on Wimbledon Common in 1860, when Queen Victoria fired the first shot and gave a prize of £250 to the best individual marksman. At subsequent events, Hay took with him all his Hythe staff to supervise the ranges.
Competing for the Queen’s Prize at the NRA Im[erial Meeting 1861
In 1868, Hay was sent to the Cape as Commander in Chief. However, in March 1873, his health started to fail. He resigned later that year and returned home, but died in October on the Isle of Wight. He is buried at Freshwater church.
The house in which he and his family had lived during his years at Hythe was known simply as the Commandant’s House and later Paddock House. The Small Arms School, as the School of Musketry later became, left Hythe in 1968 and the house passed to the local authority who re-named in in honour of Hay.
Writing Hythe History 