1. John Norton-Griffiths was born John Griffiths in Somerset on 13 July 1871.
18 Facts About John Norton-Griffiths
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John Norton-Griffiths was the son of John Griffiths, a building contractor initially of Brecon, Wales, at the time of his son's birth clerk of works at St Audries Manor Estate, West Quantoxhead.
3.
John Norton-Griffiths had an unsettled youth and left home at the age of 17.
4.
In 1901, Norton-Griffiths married Gwladys, daughter of Thomas Wood, a distillery owner.
5.
Sir John Norton-Griffiths was a keen supporter of Liverpool FC and was a director of Arsenal FC between 1928 and 1930.
6.
John Norton-Griffiths was awarded contracts to carry out major engineering projects in Africa and South America.
7.
John Norton-Griffiths was elected to Parliament in 1910 and was until 1918 the Conservative Party's MP for Wednesbury in Staffordshire.
8.
In 1914 at the start of the First World War, John Norton-Griffiths raised the 2nd King Edward's Horse at his own expense and was commissioned major in the regiment.
9.
An enigmatic figure, John Norton-Griffiths took to touring the trenches in a battered Rolls-Royce loaded with crates of fine wines.
10.
In early December 1914, John Norton-Griffiths wrote to the War Office that his tunnelling workers could be useful for the war effort, but his letter was not acted upon.
11.
Colonel John Norton-Griffiths used such techniques as dumping cement down the wells, filling tanks with nails, and emptying storage wells and then setting them on fire.
12.
John Norton-Griffiths was able, almost single-handedly, to destroy seventy refineries and 800,000 tons of crude oil.
13.
John Norton-Griffiths was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1916.
14.
John Norton-Griffiths was knighted in 1917 and promoted lieutenant colonel in 1918, and made a baronet in 1922.
15.
John Norton-Griffiths was facing the possibility of financial ruin and perhaps even criminal prosecution.
16.
On 27 September 1930, while in Egypt dealing with some problems which had arisen with this dam project, Sir John Norton-Griffiths took a rowboat from the beach of the Casino Hotel near Alexandria, Egypt.
17.
John Norton-Griffiths's body was brought back to England and he was buried at Mickleham, Surrey, on 18 October 1930 at the age of 59 years old.
18.
John Norton-Griffiths appears as a character in the 2021 British film, The War Below, which is a fictionalised account of the tunnelling operations prior to the Battle of Messines.