Sir Felix John Clewett Pole (1 February 1877 – 15 January 1956) was a British railway manager and industrialist. He was general manager of the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and r ...

from 1921 to 1929, before becoming executive chairman of

Associated Electrical Industries Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) was a British holding company formed in 1928 through the merger of the British Thomson-Houston Company (BTH) and Metropolitan-Vickers electrical engineering companies. In 1967 AEI was acquired by GEC, to c ...

, a post he held until 1945. Born in

Little Bedwyn Little Bedwyn (also spelt Little Bedwin, and sometimes called Bedwyn Parva) is a village and civil parish on the River Dun in Wiltshire, England, about south-west of the market town of Hungerford in neighbouring Berkshire. The parish inclu ...

in Wiltshire, Pole joined the

as a telegraph lad at

Swindon Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon unitary authority area had a populatio ...

, aged 14, in 1891. He was rapidly promoted and in 1904 was working in General Manager James Charles Inglis's department in the headquarters at Paddington station, working on the railway's marketing campaigns. In 1912 he became head of the Staff and Labour Department, rising to Assistant General Manager in 1919 and finally General Manager in 1921. Pole was knighted in 1924 and left the Great Western Railway in 1929 to become Executive Chairman of AEI. Pole, who was reported to be completely blind by 1945, was thought too old to lead the company into the post-war electronics boom and was succeeded by Captain Oliver Lyttelton. Pole died at

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling) ...

in 1956 and is buried in Little Bedwyn.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pole, Felix John Clewett 1877 births 1956 deaths Knights Bachelor Businesspeople awarded knighthoods English industrialists Great Western Railway people People from Wiltshire