This week we continue to look at the famous people from the past who started life in Mid Cheshire.
George Herbert Leigh Mallory was born on June 18, 1886, in Mobberley, near Knutsford.
He was the second child and first son of Reverend Herbert Leigh Mallory. George was born in Newton Hall Mobberley, as were his two sisters.
He also had one younger brother born in 1892, just one year after the family moved from Newton Hall to Hobcroft House, Hobcroft Lane, Mobberley.
The family stayed at Hobcroft House from 1891 to 1904, when they moved to Birkenhead.
His elder sister recalled that George would climb anything and everything from a very young age, including drainpipes and chimneys.
George briefly attended a preparatory school in West Kirkby before the headmaster unexpectedly died, and the school had to close.
He then attended Glengorse boarding school in Eastbourne. He won a scholarship to attend Winchester College in Hampshire. At Winchester, George was recruited by Robert Irving, a senior master there, along with a friend of George's, Harry Gibson.
Irving took Mallory and Gibson to the Alps, which was George's first climbing experience at high altitudes.
Between 1905 and 1909, George attended Magdalene College, Cambridge, to study history.
He completed his studies and decided to look for a teaching position, he was eventually offered a teaching role at Charterhouse.
The Mallory family were close friends of Hugh Thackery Turner and their family, Hugh being a famous architect of that time.
In July 1914, George married Hugh's daughter Christina Ruth Turner with George's father performing the ceremony in Godalming.
George joined the army to serve during the First World War and took part in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
He gained promotion to lieutenant in 1917 and returned to serve in France. During the war, Mallory's wife had three children, a boy and two girls.
At the war's end, George returned to Charterhouse but was dissatisfied there and attracted by the thought of continuing his mountaineering ambitions.
In 1920/1, the Royal Geographic Society and the Alpine Club jointly formed the Mount Everest Committee. George was invited to join its first expedition but initially declined the invitation.
After some persuasion, he eventually agreed and took part in order to survey and understand the landscape. It was documented using some of the very first photographic images of Mount Everest.
The following year, a further expedition took place to continue exploring the mountain with some tentative ascents using bottled oxygen for the first time. One of the attempts ended in tragedy when several of the party died due to an avalanche.
In 1924 Mallory was selected for a third expedition to attempt to climb to the summit.
Sadly, this was his last, as he and his climbing companion Andrew Irvine disappeared at the Northeast Ridge on June 8.
Whether the mountaineers reached the summit and were on their way down or were still ascending when an accident happened has long been a mystery.
Irvine's ice axe was found at 27,700 ft in the 1930s.
In 1999 a search for the two bodies found Mallory, who was then buried there, at 26,700 feet.
It was thought he had fallen and been badly injured. It was hoped that the camera he had with him to record the ascent would reveal whether they had made the summit, but unfortunately, it has not yet been found.
Polaroid have said that due to the conditions on the mountain, there is still every chance the film could be developed.
More than 296 people have died trying to climb Everest.
So, this leaves us with just one question – did George Mallory of Mobberley, Cheshire, become the first person to successfully ascend Mount Everest (a hundred years ago next year) almost 30 years before Edmund Hillary reached the summit?
Perhaps we will never know.
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