Guy Vickery Pinfield was born in Assam, India on 21 October 1894 to Frank and Gertrude Pinfield. His father was a tea planter and his mother's brother Charles Simkins ran the Amguri Tea Estate at Assam.
His father died suddenly in January 1897 in Liverpool. On the 1901 Census, Guy was living with his widowed mother and sister at 43 Lansdown Place, Hove, Sussex. The same year, his mother married Patrick Russel and they later lived at Dane House, a mansion in Bishops Stortford.
He was educated at Marlborough College, Wiltshire from 1908 to Easter 1912 and entered Clare College in 1913. He was athletic and distinguished himself at rugby and played for Rosslyn Park RFC in south west London.
Wartime Service
He joined the Army when war was declared and received his commission on 15 August 1914 as a 2nd Lt in the 8th Kings Royal Irish Hussars.
By 1916, Pinfield was stationed at the Curragh and attached to the 10th Reserve Cavalry Regiment. When the Easter Rising began, he was sent to Dublin with reinforcements. Not far from Saint Patrick's Cathedral, he was mortally wounded, being among the first British officers (116 British soldiers) to lose his life during the Rebellion. His body was temporarily laid to rest within the grounds of Dublin Castle.
Unclaimed, his grave along with four others, lay forgotten until 1962. In 1963, his body was re-interred at Grangegorman Military Cemetery. A plaque is dedicated to Lieutenant Pinfield inside Dublin's Saint Patrick's Cathedral (Church of Ireland); the only plaque within the cathedral dedicated to an individual killed during the 1916 Rising. In 2011, Guy Vickery Pinfield was the subject of both an RTE presentation and an article in the "Irish Times" relating to a gold locket which had been sold at auction for £850, more than double its estimate. It had been worn by his mother and was engraved with his initials, his date of death and the Hussar's motto "Pristinae virtutis memories" (The memory of former valour).
