With extracts taken from an article in Horizon Magazine - July 1964

Stewart Gore-Browne was born in London on May 3, 1883. After attending a private school for the children of nobility, young Stewart was sent to Harrow. “My school days, they were the most unhappy time of my life,” he recalls. “I did well academically but was hopeless at sport, which was then considered to be of great importance”.

1889 - His ambition before leaving school was to enter the Indian Civil Service, but the war in South Africa influenced him in joining the army, and in 1900, at the age of seventeen, he passed into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. A year later he was commissioned to the Royal Field Artillery, and sailed for South Africa; by the time he arrived, however, the war there was over. After a year and half in South Africa, he returned home to one of the happiest periods of his life. “I bought a 1902 Renault and toured the country in it,” he says. “Life in those peaceful days was extremely pleasant for a young officer”. Sir Stewart’s closest family tie was with his paternal Aunt, Dame Ethel Locke-King, and her husband, Hugh Lock-King. He spent much of his time at their country home, Brooklands, One of his favourite pastimes was motor racing on the world famous race track built by his uncle Hugh Locke-King . He became a skilful racing driver, and won numerous races during the first decade of the century.

Anglo-Belgian Boundary Commission, August 1911 - During his annual leave one year he volunteered for a survey course at the Ordinance Survey, Southampton. Several years later in 1911, while playing golf at Byfleet, he met the sapper officer who had conducted the survey course, and who was now in the war office. Gore Browne asked him if he knew of a job that would be a change from peacetime soldiering in England. As a result of his chance meeting he was appointed to the Anglo-Belgian Boundary Commission, which was to determine, on the ground, the boundary between Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo.