page_title: Everard Calthrop
section_title: Private life
hierarchical_section_title: Everard Calthrop / Private life
caption_attribution_description: The horse, as comrade and friend&#160;: "festina lente" / by Everard R. Calthrop.
context_page_description: Everard Richard Calthrop was a British railway engineer and inventor. Calthrop was a notable promoter and builder of narrow-gauge railways, especially of 2 ft 6 in narrow gauge, and was especially prominent in India. His most notable achievement was the Barsi Light Railway, but he is best known in his home country for the Leek and Manifold Valley Light Railway. Calthrop has been described as a "railway genius". Later in life he took an interest in aviation, patenting some early designs for parachutes.
context_section_description: During his time in India, Calthrop made occasional trips back to Britain. On one such trip he married Isabel Mary Earle, the daughter of the Reverend Walter Earle, a friend of his parents. The wedding took place on 19 November 1890 at the Bilton Parish Church, Rugby. They had four children, Everard Earle (Tev, b. 1892), Keith de Suffield (b. 1894), Isabelle Iris (b. 1895), and Betty Marion (b. 1899). Tev joined the army and became a Colonel in the Royal Engineers, while Keith, after a stint in the Royal Engineers went on to become Assistant General Manager and Mechanical Engineer of the Barsi Light Railway, a post he held until 1932.
  Calthrop had a great interest in breeding Arabian horses. Following the long-term rental of a villa in Goldings Road, Loughton, Essex, he purchased a permanent home, Goldings, at Clays Lane in Loughton, with stables and 40 acres (160,000 m²) of grounds. It was here that he bred his horses and developed his theories of horse training. Calthrop rejected the cruel methods of breaking horses common in that era, and practiced gentle methods. Such was his concern for his horses that he had them humanely destroyed rather than have them commandeered by the British army at the start of the First World War. After the war he was able to return to his horses, and wrote an authoritative book, The Horse, as Comrade and Friend, published in 1920. Calthrop was a prominent member of the Arab Horse Society, and received commendations for his stallion, Fitz, at its first show in 1919.
  Developing and promoting his parachute had left Calthrop drained, both financially and physically. Failing health forced him to resign his position as consulting engineer for the Barsi Railway in 1925, although he remained a director. Calthrop died at his Paddington, London, home on 30 March 1927, in the company of his son, Tev. He was seventy years old.
  Calthrop is commemorated by a blue plaque on Goldings, unveiled in June 2008.
caption: Image as depicted in The Horse, as Comrade and Friend, published in 1920
exif: {}