About Archie
Archie George Fillan Cruickshank was born in Hereford on 25th March 1991, younger brother to Henry and, in due course, older brother to Phoebe. With a father serving in the army at the time, Archie moved frequently with his family during his younger years, living in Berlin initially, followed by stints in Surrey, Germany again, North Yorkshire and Wiltshire, before the family left the army environment and settled in Monmouth.
Aged 8, Archie attended The Elms School in Worcestershire, where he spent five happy and sometimes mischievous years enjoying the rural setting of the school, its farm animals and sport, especially rugby. On completing his time at The Elms, Archie moved to Monmouth Boys’ School, where he played for, and captained, the U14, U15 & U16 football XI teams respectively. After taking his GCSEs in 2007, Archie attended Cheltenham College in the Sixth Form to study his A-levels. Displaying an artistic nature, Archie contributed to theatre while at school, leaving with A levels in English Literature, Art and Theatre Studies.
After securing a place at Leeds University to study History of Art, Archie took a gap year where he travelled extensively in South America and Asia, including countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Indonesia. In 2010, Archie moved to Leeds where he read History of Art, attaining a BA (Honours) in 2013. After leaving university, Archie moved to London for some temporary internship experience, before moving to Hong Kong in 2014 where he worked in a small ship-broking company for 6 months, before returning to the UK at the end of the year and landing a job in a large shipbroking company in London.
Archie was never destined to be an academic, but instead was fully connected to, and loved, the natural world, and he was particularly fond of animals and wildlife in general. What Archie lacked in the classroom, he more than made up for in terms of physique and personal attributes. So many people who knew Archie comment about his good looks, his charm, his impeccable manners, his unswerving loyalty, his compassion for others, as well as the fact that, despite early challenges with dyslexia, he became one of the world’s greatest conversationalists – no mean feat when coming from a naturally quiet family.
Although there was always an underlying lack of self-confidence, Archie was an adventurer and the ultimate risk-taker, pushing the boundaries and living on a spectrum. Despite his attempts to show a hard-man exterior, you only had to chip gently at the surface to find the most caring, soft, vulnerable and loving human being. He fell foul of the drugs culture in Leeds while at university, and latterly in London. Although he accepted the challenge of rehabilitation, the wide and routine availability of substances proved the ultimate challenge, and in January 2018 ended up costing Archie his life.
Archie’s love of the natural world, and animals in particular, make the Archie Cruickshank Foundation his most obvious legacy, and it is with bitter satisfaction that his family, and the Foundation’s trustees, have established this charity with the sole purpose of improving the welfare of animals around the world, as well as enhancing the lives of young people who, like Archie in previous times, may face unwanted challenges, by offering them the chance to interact with, care for, and ultimately enjoy the company of animals.
Address
29 The Parade
Monmouth
NP25 3PA
United Kingdom
Contact
paulc@agfcfoundation.com
(+44) 01600 716300
© The Archie Cruickshank Foundation | Registered charity number 1178889
English