John Laycock

Christopher John Laycock, lawyer, was the founder of one of Singapore's earliest law firms, "Laycock and Ong". It was also in his firm that Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Minister-Mentor of Singapore was employed and began his career as a lawyer in 1949, upon graduating from the Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge in the UK. Mr Lee had also began his first experience in politics when he acted as an election agent for John Laycock and his pro-British Singapore Progressive Party (SPP) in 1951.

John Laycock grew up in Manchester, England, and was an influential figure in the early development of rock climbing on the gritstone edges of the Peak District of Derbyshire along with his close friends Siegfried Herford, also of Manchester, and Stanley Jeffcoat of Buxton. In 1903 Laycock became a founder member of the Manchester-based Rucksack Club which included many other luminaries of the Manchester mountaineering scene of the day including Charles Pilkington of the glass manufacturing dynasty. Laycock, Herford and Jeffcoat climbed numerous new routes on many of the fine escarpments of Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Yorkshire in the years leading up to the First World War, and these were faithfully recorded in Laycock's guidebook 'Some Gritstone Climbs' which was the first guidebook on rock climbing in the Peak District ever published. The Rucksack Club was opposed to the publication of the book as a number of the crags described were on private property and the club was concerned about trespass law. Laycock resigned from the club in disgust and the book was published by the Refuge Printing Department (an insurance company in Manchester at the time) in 1913. In the years that followed both Herford and Jeffcoat were killed in the trenches of Flanders, and Laycock never fully recovered from their loss. He left England for Singapore and, it is said, never went rock climbing again, although he wrote a wonderful preface to Fergus Graham's guidebook 'Recent Developments on Gritsone' published in 1926.

The Island Club of Singapore

John founded the Race Course Golf Club, Singapore's first truly multi-racial club on 1 October, 1924 at Farrer Park. The club served Asians who wanted to learn to play golf but could not join the exclusively-European Royal Singapore Golf Club, and other avid golfers living around Bukit Timah area. The Club lasted for three years, before it was evicted by the Turf Club land-owners who had sold the land. [ [http://www.sicc.org.sg/Web/main.aspx?ID=b39184a9-11d6-4def-b4c2-09a2dc2109ec| Singapore Island Country Club's History] ]
Thus, John began searching for a new location for the Golf Club, and in 1929 found the perfect location in MacRitchie catchment area. John, then a Municipal Commissioner of Singapore, and his friends A. P. Rajah and C. C. Tan, immediately submitted their plans for the new Club for the locations, and received their stamp of approval at the General Committee Meeting of the Singapore Municipal Council on 28 June, 1929.
Design for the 18-hole course was done by Peter Robinson of Braid Hills, Edinburgh and the construction began on March 1930. John and his grounds committee comprising of members like Dr Harold Lim, supervised the entire project for the next two years.
The new club was officially opened and re-named The Island Club on 27 August 1932, officiated by the Sir Cecil Clementi, Governor of Singapore. Sir Chan Sze Jin, CMG (S. J. Chan) became the Club's first President, and John Laycock took on the role as First Captain.

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