Richard Carr-Gomm

Who was Richard Carr-Gomm?

Major Richard Carr-Gomm, OBE was the founder of the Abbeyfield Society, the Morpeth Society and the Carr-Gomm Society, UK charities providing care and housing for disadvantaged and lonely people.

He was educated at Stowe School and served in the Royal Berkshire Regiment and the Coldstream Guards from 1939 to 1955. He was amongst the first troops to enter Belsen in April 1945. He was awarded the Croix de guerre in 1944.

Carr-Gomm was deeply affected during the Billy Graham crusade to London in 1954. In 1955 he left the Army and became a volunteer home-help. Perceiving the loneliness of the people whom he was helping to be a particular problem, he spent his Army gratuity on buying a house which he invited some of them to share with him. In his subsequent life he founded a number of charities which run care homes for the elderly, the disadvantaged, and those suffering from loneliness. For this work he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1985, and in 2004 received a Beacon Prize for lifetime achievement.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1957 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.