Colonel Thomas Armitage Hall, CVO, OBE 1928-2022

 Colonel Thomas Armitage Hall, CVO, OBE, died 12 October, 2022. He was 94. 

Colonel Tom Hall, who has died aged 94, played a prominent role in the development of the French Alpine resort of Méribel as a favoured destination for British skiers. He was also Lieutenant of the Gentlemen at Arms, the sovereign’s ceremonial bodyguard, and an entrepreneur in the field of international language schools.

Thomas Armitage Hall was born 13 April, 1928, the only child of Athelstan Argyle Hall (1894-1963), and his wife the former Nancy Armitage Dyson (1901-86); and married 24 February, 1954, Marie Antoinette Hornby (born 9 Nov, 1932, died 2020), scion of that landed gentry family, daughter of Sir Roger Antony Hornby (1904-1987), and his wife the former Lady Veronica Brenda Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood (1910-1971), daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Dufferin & Ava (1875-1930), by whom he had two sons, Edward and John, and four daughters, Jane, Annabel, Lucy and Catherine.

In 1980 Hall had become a member of Her Majesty’s Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms – retired officers who attend the sovereign at state events and garden parties. He was promoted in 1994 to Lieutenant of the Gentlemen (effectively commanding officer, their honorary Captain being the government’s chief whip in the House of Lords), retiring on his seventieth birthday in 1998. He was also chairman from 1990 to 1996 of the Cavalry & Guards Club, whose Piccadilly freehold he had helped secure some years earlier in a tough negotiation with the property developer Elliot Bernerd.

He was appointed OBE in 1966 and CVO on retirement from the Gentlemen at Arms, Hall was high sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1981-2. 

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