Harold Edward Westray Prest (9 January 1890 – 5 January 1955) was an English amateur

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er who played

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

for

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

either side of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Early life

Prest was both in Beckenham in what was then part of

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, the son of Stanley and Emily Priest. His father was a director of an engineering company and Prest was educated at Abbey School in Beckenham before going on to

Malvern College Malvern College is an Independent school (United Kingdom), independent coeducational day and boarding school in Malvern, Worcestershire, Malvern, Worcestershire, England. It is a public school (United Kingdom), public school in the British sen ...

where he played in the school First XI for three years, making a high score of 174 not out in 1908 as he headed the Malvern batting averages.Prest, Mr Harold Edward Westray - Obituaries in 1955
''

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

'', 1955. Retrieved 2016-04-21.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp.455–456.
Available online
at the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Retrieved 2020-12-23.) He was considered by '' Wisden'' as a fine, aggressive schoolboy batsman with "excellent style", as well as a good fielder and played for the public schools side against MCC at

Lord's Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...

. He went on to

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College (officially "The Master, Fellows and Scholars of the College or Hall of Valence-Mary") is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 ...

and played for

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

12 times, appearing in Varsity matches in 1909 and 1911.First-class matches played by Harold Prest
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2016-04-22.
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2016-04-21. As well as cricket, Prest also won

Blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

and

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

Cricket career

Prest made his debut for

in 1909 whilst in his first year at Cambridge, playing four times for the county during the season and being awarded his county cap as Kent won the 1909 County Championship.Harold Prest
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2016-04-22. Kent County Cricket Club - Capped Male Players

. Retrieved 2020-12-21. He did not play any first-class cricket in 1910 due to injury, resuming his career in 1911, playing 19 matches in total during the season, by far his most productive.First-class batting and fielding in each season by Henry Prest
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2016-04-22. He played ten times for Kent and nine times for

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

during the season and made a total of 747 runs, including his only first-class century, a score of 133 not out for Kent against

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

. Prest played a total of 19 matches for Kent during his career, playing only a handful of games in 1912 before appearing in two

County Championship The County Championship (referred to as the LV= Insurance County Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It bec ...

matches in 1922. He played club cricket for Beckenham, Old Malvernians and Yellowhammers.

Military service

Prest joined the

Royal Berkshire Regiment The Royal Berkshire Regiment (Princess Charlotte of Wales's) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army in existence from 1881 until 1959. The regiment was created in 1881, as the Princess Charlotte of Wales's (Royal Berkshire Regiment), by ...

at the start of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and had been commissioned as a

2nd lieutenant Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank. Australia The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until ...

by the end of 1914. Trained in the use of machine guns, he initially served with the 3rd battalion on the home front and was promoted to

lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations. The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often sub ...

, but was posted to the 2nd battalion in France in May 1916. His unit took part in the

Battle of the Somme The Battle of the Somme ( French: Bataille de la Somme), also known as the Somme offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place bet ...

later in the year, although Prest was part of a small group of men kept out of the initial attack in order to provide a nucleus around which to rebuild the battalion.Lewis P (2013) ''For Kent and Country'', pp.276–278. Brighton: Reveille Press. Loses amongst other officers meant that Prest was promoted to acting

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

and given command of a company towards the end of 1916. He saw front line action at

Bouchavesnes Bouchavesnes-Bergen is a commune in the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. Geography The commune is situated on the junction of the D149 and the N17 roads, some northwest of Saint-Quentin. Population See also *Communes ...

in March 1917, repulsing a German counter-attack and was

mentioned in dispatches To be mentioned in dispatches (or despatches, MiD) describes a member of the armed forces whose name appears in an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which their gallant or meritorious action in the face ...

and awarded the

Croix de Guerre The ''Croix de Guerre'' (, ''Cross of War'') is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was first awa ...

. Later in 1917, he was posted as Chief Instructor in a machine gun school and in 1918 commanded a Lewis gun and mortar school, promoted to acting

major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

. He was demobilised in February 1919, retaining the rank of major. At the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he rejoined the army, serving as a lieutenant with a home defence battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment. Ill health led to him leaving service in October 1941.

Later life

Prest married Alice Lauriston in 1944. He was a keen golfer and played for Seaford, the Oxford and Cambridge Society and the Royal Worlington and Newmarket clubs. He died at Chinthurst near

Shalford, Surrey Shalford is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England on the A281 Horsham road immediately south of Guildford. It has a railway station which is between Guildford and Dorking on the Reading to Gatwick Airport line. It has one named locali ...

in 1955 aged 64.Harold Prest

CricInfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

. Retrieved 2020-12-23.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Prest, Harold English cricketers Kent cricketers 1890 births 1955 deaths People educated at Malvern College Cambridge University cricketers H. D. G. Leveson Gower's XI cricketers British Army personnel of World War I Royal Berkshire Regiment officers British Army personnel of World War II Royal Norfolk Regiment officers Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 (France) Military personnel from London Cricketers from the London Borough of Bromley People from Beckenham