He was educated at Wixenford Preparatory School for five years and Harrow School for a further three. He passed into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1900 and was commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery. From 1902 to 1904 he did survey work in Natal before returning to England to take up motor racing at Brooklands. He went to Northern Rhodesia in 1911 as part of an Anglo-Belgian boundary commission, laying out the border between the Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia. From his boyhood, Gore-Browne had an ambition to own an estate but though comparatively wealthy, knew that he could not afford much land in Britain.