interview
Then it was back to Combermere Barracks in
Windsor for a year, so lots of polo on his own ponies at Guards Polo Club, plus a rented home in the Park – the legendary Stable Cottage. Of course there was plenty of soldiering too, but as Stuart Cowen says, his military career was pretty much in two halves. “The first half of my career was a lot of Cold War soldiering. I did two tours of Germany, but there was a lot of waiting for the Cold War threat to happen which it never did. It was very different from the second half of my career from the ‘90s when I took command of a squadron in the Balkans and we have been pretty much hard at it since 92/93. “The defining change came for me in the 1990s when I decided to have a full career in the army and so in 1993 I went to Staff College and then almost immediately to the Balkans. This was a really interesting seven-month tour in1995. It had a reasonably steady start and then in the summer there were the terrible atrocities at Srebrenica and we changed our mandate from United Nations peace keeping mission, which was a bit of a toothless tiger, to a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) force which was more punchy. We went from being static in a base in an old metal factory to going up to high ground in the middle of nowhere, on the border between Croatia and Bosnia, waiting for whatever NATO planned. “I remember one really wet and windy day,
up a windswept hill on which I had been told to set up a firing range for the military fighting vehicles, so we had to work out quite a large template. On my return my Commanding Officer asked how it had gone. I was rather crotchety and said if I was in England now I would be at
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Smith’s Lawn (watching the finals of the Queen’s Cup). So he named the ranges Smith’s Lawn, which shut me up. There are still military maps of Bosnia that have Smith’s Lawn on them.” When Major Cowen returned the UK he joined the Board of Guards Polo Club, which was still a military club. “The Chairman, Major General Bernard Gordon Lennox, asked me to join and I have been on pretty much ever since. I also offered continuity when we transferred from a military to a civilian Club in 2000 – the Household Division had a lot of its reputation invested in the Club – it is named the Guards Polo Club and the logo includes the emblem of Household Division and so the military thought it would be a good idea to have an appointment on the board to act as a military sounding board for the predominantly civilian management.
“I had been on the board five years by then, loved the Club and had just been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel when I was appointed the President’s Representative on the Board. I am there as continuity and advise the Board, but it’s not formal, more nuanced.” Colonel Cowen has also had the huge job of being Chairman of the Grounds Committee since 2000. “If you look at the grounds then and what is expected of the grounds today, there has been a huge challenge to manage those expectations. Grounds are the most emotive part of the Club, there is never a more demanding expectation than having the highest quality grounds but we are the premier club so we should have the best grounds. We play more polo than any private ground and most other club grounds and we provide polo when
others cannot so you almost set a false bar, a false expectation of what you can deliver. We have got to the stage of the rule of diminishing returns where you are right on the edge of what the capacity of the grounds can have. You can put a lot more money in, but the quality and amount of play can only be so much, so you have to go right back to basics, renovate, landscape, drain them and provide top irrigation and the best grass. It is investing for a good reason but it’s a huge investment. I am currently involved in looking at how we landscape grounds 3 to 8. We should end up with three full-size grounds and may even get a fourth; we are waiting to see quite how planning goes for ground 8. The Princes’ Ground will be extended and resurfaced. Of course, we need to ensure the continuity of polo so also have to look at the impact of these works on the playing schedule. “Not surprisingly we have had our challenges. We have in the past been justly accused that our grounds are not of the right quality and so have invested heavily. The great joy of being Chairman of the Grounds Committee is when you see grounds like the Castle and Cavalry grounds at Flemish Farm come into play. The developments at 3-8 are the final part of the jigsaw and if we are successful then that will be a great legacy. So although Colonel Cowen has retired from
the Household Cavalry, he is clearly not resting on his laurels. In addition to his work with the Berkeley Homes Foundation, he is also involved in the Rank Prize Fund which was set up by his maternal grandfather J Arthur Rank – of Pinewood and flour fame. Leaving the Army also gives him more time to spend with his wife Lizzie and their children Georgina and Henry, although horses will continue to feature here. “Lizzie has always ridden but is fed up with riding retired Army horses or polo ponies and would like a beautiful hunter. So maybe the time has come to get another horse that we can share, which would be lovely.” No?
guards polo club official yearbook 2016
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