Geoffrey Bright, 1895–1980
Soldier, Auctioneer, Poet
Geoffrey Bright saw distinguished service in the First World War. On his return to Herefordshire he settled in Luston and had a career as an auctioneer.
He became a partner in the Leominster firm of Russell Baldwin and Bright.
A man of many talents — he was a broadcaster, writer and poet and wrote the classic ‘Herefordshire is Heaven’.
Geoffrey William Bright was born in Ludlow where his father was a Quarry manager. He attended Ludlow Grammar School and Harper Adams Agricultural College near Newport. When war came he was mobilised as a territorial in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry and was sent to Singapore, where he spent three years and rose to the rank of lieutenant. When his unit returned to Europe they were sent, without leave, to the Western Front. On the 6th June 1918, Lieutenant Bright found himself as a junior officer leading the depleted battalion in a charge in the face of a hail of machinegun fire and shrapnel to take the crest of a hill at Bligny near Rheims in France.
The battle was in the French sector and the admiring French awarded the entire battalion the Croix de Guerre avec Palme, the highest unit honour they could bestow. Bright, who was later promoted Captain, was one of three of the Shropshire regiment soldiers to receive the medal individually.
After his return to civilian life, Geoffrey worked for a firm of Corn Factors, and in 1923 married his childhood sweetheart Kathleen Sanders. The couple chose the 6th June for the ceremony. They moved to Luston and in 1939 Geoffrey joined the Leominster auctioneering firm of Edwards, Russell & Baldwin. He later became Director and Chairman of the firm, then retitled ‘Russel, Baldwin and Bright’ (see also Sir Archer Ernest Baldwin).
As well as becoming a renowned expert on antiques he had a career as a writer and broadcaster. His play, ‘Memories’, about his war experience was first performed at the Corn Exchange, Leominster, but was soon in demand in several of the surrounding towns. Part of the play was performed in Leominster Priory in 2014 as part of Leominster Museums ‘Rifles and Spades’ commemoration of the First World War. Geoffrey Bright never lost sight of the men who, like him, had fought in the War. He was for years Chairman of the Leominster Branch of the British Legion of which he was one of the founders.
During the Second World War he broadcast with the American forces network in a programme called “So Long, Yank.” And in the 1950s he presented a radio programme for the BBC called Sunday Out, visiting stately homes and villages in the Welsh borders. He also used to write regular articles for the Herefordshire Times about the countryside.
He wrote ‘Hereford is Heaven’, a book of poems about Herefordshire and lines from this poem are inscribed on the Old Market development in Hereford, and wrote ‘West of the Malverns,’ a series of anecdotes about characters who lived in the countryside.
Geoffrey Bright also served as a J.P., a governor of the National Library of Wales and a director of The Three Counties Show.
