Tony Marchington

Dr Tony Marchington

In 1988, under his tutor Professor Graham Richards, Marchington co-founded Oxford Molecular Ltd. Worth £450 million at its peak, but which was eventually sold for £70million.

In 1996, Marchington bought the famous LNER steam locomotive Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman at a cost of £1.5M. After a three restoration which cost an additional £1M, she returned to steam in 1999. In 2004 Marchington placed Flying Scotsman up for sale, because of mounting debts. After a high-profile campaign it was bought in April 2004 by the National Railway Museum in York and it is now part of the National Collection.

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The man who owns the ultimate in Big Boys’ Toys – the Flying Scotsman – could perhaps be forgiven for thinking there is little more left to relish. But not so Oxfordshire’s Assistant Provincial Grand Master Dr Tony Marchington, a person who enjoys life, Freemasonry and his family – and not necessarily in that order.

   For him, his family comes first. To this end, his meteoric rise up the Freemasonry ladder since joining in 1991 has now been deliberately slowed down by this 44-year-old businessman and once full-time showman, to spend more time with his wife Caroline, son David (4) and daughter Louise (2).
   Freemasonry is also something he prizes, and with that appreciation there comes his express desire for change within the Craft.
   We met when he and his family were spending a weekend together in their caravan. The Flying Scotsman was the star attraction at a steam enthusiasts’ centre in the Peak District, and he was enjoying being with both his “toy” and his family.
   He was vehement in suggesting that the Craft should be less centralised and should become more localised. But more of that later.
   Besides owning what is certainly the most well-known steam locomotive in the world, he has many more “playthings” for he heads Buxworth Steam Group, a family organisation that offers old-time attractions for corporate hire.
   He had brought along to the event not only the Flying Scotsman, but a steam-driven 1893 carousel called the Galloping Golden Horses which still has its original fairground organ.
   He purchased the Flying Scotsman (built in 1923) in 1996 and said, “At the time only an idiot would have bought it. It cost me one and a half million.” Almost a further £1 million was spent on its restoration over three years. He is now commencing excursion trips on this, the world’s first locomotive to travel non-stop from Kings Cross to Edinburgh in 1927, and which achieved 100mph in 1934.
   His organisation owns 25 traction engines, including a showman’s engine called The Iron Maiden, which starred in a 1963 film entitled, appropriately enough, “The Iron Maiden”.
   Then there are two matched pairs of ploughing engines, two steam wagons, six steamrollers, and a road locomotive, built in 1900, which was the first armour-plated vehicle in the world (and which led to the introduction of the tank in the First World War).
   There is also a steam fire engine and a seagoing steam tug that Tony described as “an engineering nutter’s paradise”. In addition, there are many fairground rides such as the Steam Galloping Horses, a Helter Skelter, a Ferris Wheel, Cake Walk, a 1925 set of German-built Chairoplanes and various other rides.
   If that wasn’t enough there is a Wall of Death, complete with 1930s Indian motorcycle, which used to be “travelled” by a larger-than-life character called Tornado Smith, who rode it complete with a sidecar in which he carried his pet lion.
   After working for ICI he left “to be my own boss” and subsequently established Oxford Molecular, a hi-tech spinout company in conjunction with the University of Oxford. Oxford Molecular has just been sold, and Tony now has plans for another hi-tech Oxford-based company.
   Tony Marchington has been collecting items since a boy living with his farming family in the small village of Buxworth in Derbyshire, which is affectionately known as “Buggy”. He passed his motorcycle test at the age of 16, and riding his father’s 1914 vintage Bradbury motorcycle then became his free entry ticket into the many steam rallies held across the UK.
   At 22 he went on to buy his first steamroller off a haulage contractor and scrap dealer called Ted Eansworth of Chesterfield, who told him there was ten years left in the machine. It packed up ten years later and is now in the process of total restoration.
   He met wife Caroline because of his and her passion for steam. He would journey the highways and byways of the Peak District with his steam engine and a living van attached.
   Each time the ancient machine puffed up the A6 from Bakewell to Wardlow Mires it passed her family farm, and she used to come out, sit atop her father’s Land Rover, and wait for the steam engine to go past.
   One time he stopped and invited her to jump on the back and she travelled with Tony and his father to a pub several miles away, where they were staying with the steam engine for the evening. She offered to come over the following day and make breakfast. The rest, as they say, is history.
   His first brush with Freemasonry came when he noticed a friend, John Hall, an East Lancashire Mason, was wearing a Masonic ring and he asked him about it.
   “My impression of Masonry was that it was the local butcher, the baker and grocer and suchlike who got together and would dive in their pockets to buy books for local children and that kind of thing,” he said.
  
   He added: “This friend introduced me to his son-in-law who was in the chair of his nearby lodge, and I was going to be proposed. Unfortunately, it was just when I was about to move back to Oxford to set up Oxford Molecular. I decided the trip back to Lancashire for meetings would be too much.”
   As an undergraduate Tony had attended Brasenose College, Oxford, but during his undergraduate days had been completely unaware of university Freemasonry.
   That was until he returned to Oxford ten years later to set up Oxford Molecular and started to go to college reunions and functions. At the annual dinner of old Brasenose members, he sat next to none other than Jim Daniel, now Grand Secretary of the United Grand Lodge of England.

Intrigued by masonry

“I have always been intrigued by Freemasonry” he explained, “and I said I would be very interested in joining”. Jim Daniel put Tony in contact with the secretary of Apollo University Lodge 357, the late John Cockin. John was on the Board of General Purposes and a very senior Mason, who sadly died in late 1999.

   He proved a tremendous influence on Tony, who was initiated in January 1991, passed and raised and the following year and went in the chair in November 1996.
   This was celebrated with the production of a limited number of mugs with the square and compass on one side and the Flying Scotsman on the other. Unfortunately, he did not keep his own, giving it away to someone who could not attend the meeting, and now the only one he knows of is in the museum at Oxford.

Friends in the Craft

He continued: “I did enjoy Apollo right from the start and began to make a lot of friends. My wife and I appreciate all the friends we have within Freemasonry. I would say at least one-third of our friends are from the Craft.”

   He mentioned a number of people, including Alan J. Englefield, now Secretary of the Supreme Council 33rd Degree. He added that recently he was asked to bring a steam engine to a college fund-raising function.
   He described how the Secretary of the Supreme Council, the UGLE Grand Secretary, Geoffrey Bourne Taylor – secretary of Apollo Lodge and Bursar at St Edmund Hall, Oxford - and Peter Butler, a Past Master of Apollo, plus himself, were all to be seen driving and firing the vintage steam wagon down Oxford High Street. “It could only happen in Freemasonry” he chuckled.
   His Masonic career continued when he became a Knight Templar, joined the Order of the Red Cross of Constantine, Mark Masonry and Royal Ark Mariners. He was elected a Provincial Grand Steward and then Assistant Provincial Grand Master for Oxfordshire.
   It was upon his APGM that he reflected, saying: “I feel this was a deliberate attempt by the PGM to find someone who was busy and could organise priorities. I feel very strongly that when I see a young Mason (and in Apollo they can come in at the age of 17) I tell them to enjoy it, but don’t let it take over. One cannot put Masonry before your family, for instance, and I am at that stage where I have decided to slow down in Masonry and to enjoy my family. I have chosen to do one Order at a time and to spend time with my family. Life is for living and should be enjoyed.”
   As he sipped his tea from a large mug, he continued, “The more centralised Masonry becomes the less attractive it gets. It is best in when a number of blokes join together into a lodge because they want to enjoy it.
   “Take London for instance. Any move to make London Masonry more centralised is going in the wrong direction. I often suggest to Jim Daniel – somewhat tongue in cheek – that we should sell Great Queen Street, bank the proceeds, and move to lower cost, more efficient premises somewhere in central England.
   “The London lodges, like the rest of us, would then have the opportunity to be more locally based and focussed, meeting in nice little local pubs like we used to.”
   He added, “This also goes for the Provinces. The Lodges that thrive are those in little Masonic Halls where the wives prepare the festive board and people come together because they enjoy each other’s company. It’s where I feel Masonry functions best, when you have the local lodges and brethren get together simply because they enjoy their own company.”
   He cited Tame Valley Lodge in East Lancashire (of which he is now also a member and a Steward) and said, “It is a Lodge that is flourishing. But in East Lancashire there is a current suggestion that such Lodges may be amalgamated by rolling two or three Lodges into one. In my view this would be a tremendous mistake.”
   He continued reflectively, “Although it is right that we have centralised charities, and can do big things, giving to smaller charitable items is far more important.
   “For me, what will really benefit Masonry is local: the computers for schools, the donations to local hospices. We should keep a large proportion of our charitable efforts focussed on our own local communities.
   “The future of Masonry is with the local community and not with centralisation. The essential thing is to be local, that is what Masonry is all about. I never will forget the butchers and the bakers who donated books free of charge to our impoverished little primary school in the 1950s and 1960s.”
   We parted as he was being interviewed by local radio. He was, for those thousands who had flocked to the steam event, as much a star as the world-famous engine he now owns and loves.
   It was obvious that here is a man who believes passionately in Masonry and in people, but it does not end there. More than anything, he loves his family and, before I had met him that morning and I was walking towards his caravan, I had noticed he was pushing his two small children on swingboats he had brought along for the event. His smile was then broader than when, some hours later, he took to the footplate of the Flying Scotsman.