John Wedgwood (1920 – 2004) was born in Nigeria to missionary parents but he spent most of his early home life in his grandfather’s house in Cambridgeshire. It was here as he grew older that he started to develop his interest in railways as he and his brothers and friends used to chase the trains on the Stour Valley Railway.

He was educated at Monkton Combe School near Bath where both his academic and sporting prowess came to the fore. He became Head Boy. He represented his school at all the major sports and was something of an athlete, holding the record for the 110 yards hurdles for many years.

He read history at Queen’s College Cambridge and his course was shortened to two years by the onset of war, but he still managed to get a good degree. He pursued three sports actively, but his main love was hockey. In his second year he took Queen’s to the final of the college cup for which they were favourites, only to have the match cancelled due to snow! He would surely have won a “blue” in his third year.

He volunteered to join the Lincolnshire Regiment, but before long he was transferred to the Durham Light Infantry, specialising in signals. In 1942, leaving a wife and baby son behind, he travelled to North Africa to join the 8th Army and the Battle of El Alamein. Following this he took part in the Sicily landings.

His next appointment was on June 6th 1944. He was proud that his unit was the only one which reached its objective on D Day, but this resulted in them running ahead of their support and supplies, causing his jeep to attract the unwelcome attention of a German tank. The shell missed so his luck held that day, but ran out some time later when he was wounded in Holland. He spent the rest of the war in India in a training capacity and helping to organise the transport of troops by rail.

When Acting Major John Wedgwood came home from the war he completed his education by working for his Institute exams, while holding down a full time job at the Ministry of Fuel and Power. His injury meant that he never played sport again, although he enjoyed watching cricket at the Oval where he was a member. When he qualified as a Chartered Secretary, his career in the electricity industry took off and he soon became the Secretary to the Electricity Council. That is where he might have finished but for somebody persuading him that he could have a future in more senior executive management.

Consequently he applied for, and was given, the job of Deputy Chairman of the South Eastern Electricity Board followed, after a relatively short time, by the Chairmanship of the Southern Electricity Board.

He believed in looking after the interests of all the staff and on his visits to the district offices would wait into the evening to talk to the people coming in from outside. After bad weather he would make a point of going out and thanking the linesmen for their work in restoring power supplies. At the end of the Falklands War he remembered the difficulty experienced by many of the war wounded in 1945, so he made sure that Southern Electricity opened some jobs to men who had been wounded in this latest conflict. This attitude also explains his great interest in “The Royal British Legion”.

While his career progressed, he was taking an active part in the running of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators and he became its President. When The Worshipful Company of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators came into being in 1977 John Wedgwood was not only one of the founding members, but was elected Founder Master, which was something of which he was enormously proud, and was a source of the most immense pleasure for the following 27 years until his death in 2004. Through both the Institute and the Company he made a great number of lasting and close friendships.

On his retirement from the Southern Electricity Board in 1984 he was awarded the CBE. This and his war medals were donated to the Company by his son and have been framed to form part of the Company’s treasures.