Born: 1909 and died 1994.
Son of: Ronald Collins (1867-1942) and Margaret Colins nee Helsham-Jones (1841-1951).
Brother of:
1. Richard Arthur (Dick) Collins (1903-1972) who married Patricia Maud.
2. Mary Frances Margaret Seely (nee Collins, 1905-1987) who married Victor Seely.
3. Alice Eleanor Grace Collins (1906-1907).
4. Elizabeth Rosamond Collins, known as Ros (1912-1987).
Christopher married: in 1936 Jenny Rosdew Drake.
Christoper and Jenny had issue:
1. Rosemary Evangeline Collins (born 1938) who married 1st in 1963 Andrew John Locke Marx (Cdr RN), 2nd James William Featherstone Briggs.
2. Ronald Drake Collins (1947-2000) who married Pepita Quinn.
Christopher Collins – born Hatch End, Middx and educated Wellington College. Did not go to University but did some business studies before going into the family firm of D and W Gibbs with his father and his Gibbs cousins. They had an office in the City and the soapworks were at Wapping. He was a keen horseman, hunted and drove his father’s carriage and 4 in hand coach. In the early 1930’s he would keep a hunter in Essex so that he could travel out to Harlow or Sawbridgeworth by train on a Saturday morning (dressed in his hunting kit), where he was met by his horse upon which he would ride on to the Meet, have a days hunting and then get back on the train. He would get home in time to change and go out with his sister, Mary and other friends, to the Barclay where they would dance the night away.
When he married in 1936, he and his wife Jenny moved into a rented house at Epping. They lived there until 1951, with a break of 3 years when he was sent by Unilever to Egypt from 1947 to 1950. He served in WW2 first as a Special Constable in the Metropolitan mounted Police for about a year as he was too old to join any regiment as an officer at the time. Later he decided to join the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) as a Private Soldier (driver) and was soon sent for officer training. He served in North Africa and Italy and finished the War as a Major.
In 1947 he and his wife and daughter, Rosemary, went to live in Cairo, Egypt for 3 years during which time their son Ronald was born. They returned to England in 1950. In 1951 the family moved to Woolton Hill near Newbury, where they lived until 1960. Christopher was then area sales manager for the south of England for Lever’s Feeds (agricultural feed) based in Reading. In 1960 he was promoted to Director and was based in Bromborough, near Port Sunlight. They bought a house in Cheshire, near Malpas where they lived until he retired in the late 1960s. Then they moved to Suffolk, near Newmarket, where Christopher was very active for a time with the local Pony Club. He was also a member of the Court of the Merchant Taylor’s Company in which he took a great interest and was Master of the Company in 1968 (I think).
Eventually they moved next to their son near Axminster, and when Jenny died in 1990 he moved into a Grandpa flat at his daughter’s home in Wiltshire where he died in 1994.