Robert Wilkinson

Robert Hindley Wilkinson (1811 – 5 February 1888) was a British academic, and a cricketer with amateur status who was active from 1828 to 1831.

Life Wilkinson was born in London, the son of Robert Wilkinson and his wife Catherine Allix, daughter of John Peter Allix of Swaffham Prior; the Rev. Charles Allix Wilkinson, the writer, and Isaac Herbert Wilkinson were his brothers, in a family of seven brothers and three sisters. He attended Eton College and was cricket captain there in 1828. He entered King's College, Cambridge, in 1830, graduating B.A. in 1833 and M.A. in 1836. He was a Fellow of King's from 1832 to 1852, and bursar in 1846. Entering Lincoln's Inn in 1835, he was called to the bar in 1838.

Wilkinson was a magistrate and lieutenant-colonel of militia. They had a son, Edward Obert Hindley Wilkinson, an officer of the 60th Rifles drowned after the battle of Ingogo in 1881. Their daughter Caroline Elizabeth married Charles Poyntz Stewart.

Forster had written a piece about the house, the "Rooksnest memoir", by 1894 when he was 15 which mentions Wilkinson as landlord. From 1914 Elizabeth Poston lived there: the Forsters had known the Poston family when they were the residents. The memoir was published with the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Howards End. Another memoir by Forster, from the 1940s and about West Hackhurst, Abinger Hammer in Surrey which was his home from 1925, returns to the associations of Rooksnest.

Rooksnest, now called Rook's Nest House, had once been named Howards. It became a Grade I listed building in 1976.