Harry Fell (OW 1953)

15 July 1935 –  2 July 2023

[photo shows Harry in MCS uniform with the bike that the school provided for him c.1947]

We are grateful to Harry’s son David Fell for the eulogy he wrote and read at his father’s funeral.

Harry was born in Headington on 15 July 1935. Last  Saturday would have been his 88^th birthday. Sadly he didn’t quite make it.

He was one of a relatively few number of people who lived through the reign of five monarchs. 1935 was the penultimate year of the reign of King George V. The short reign of King Edward VIII followed and then George VI. He saw the entire reign of England’s longest reigning monarch Elizabeth II and lived for the first few months of the new king, Charles III.

He was born in Risinghurst, at number 5 Kiln Lane (later renumbered 7). Risinghurst at the time was a newly built estate and Harry and his parents were the first occupiers of their house. It remained in the ownership of the family for approximately eighty years.

His parents, Henry and Eva were from working backgrounds. Eva was born in a mining town in the South Wales valleys named Aberdare. When in her teens, like many girls of her generation, she went into ‘service’ and was employed in a large house in Slough.

His father Henry was from Southam, a small town in Warwickshire between Coventry and Banbury. He worked as a gardener and found employment in the same household in Slough. The couple married and settled in Oxford- a convenient location, approximately halfway between Southam and Aberdare.

Harry attended the local primary school and obtained a scholarship for Magdalen College School. A public school education would normally be beyond the means of a family of this type but Magdalen College offered scholarships to pupils from Wales and Harry qualified because his mother was from Aberdare.

Magdalen College School is at the bottom of Headington Hill, approximately three miles from the family home. The school offered him the choice of the daily bus fare, or a bicycle. Harry chose the bicycle and he must have clocked up quite a few miles riding up and down Headington Hill.

When Harry left school in the mid-1950s National Service was still compulsory. I am not sure of the exact year, but it was the final year of mandatory National Service. He served his year and then briefly worked for a local firm of architects, Carter’s, who were based opposite the family home along Kiln Lane.

He decided that architecture was not for him and he made a change of course for teaching. He went to Teacher Training College and chose the College of Ripon and York St John, in the city of York.

It was while at York that he met his wife Gillian and they married in York in 1963. The marriage lasted and sadly Gillian died recently, a few months short of what would have been their Diamond Wedding Anniversary.

The couple returned to Oxfordshire and purchased a bungalow in Wheatley. Harry was briefly a student teacher in Bletchley and then taught for several years at the primary school in Berinsfield, where he specialised in remedial work and later on mathematics.

Two children were born, firstly David (myself) in 1965 and Caroline in 1968.

By the early 1970s it was time for a change. I am not sure of the reason, perhaps to be closer to Gillian’s family in York, but they returned northwards and Harry found a position at the Grammar School at Thorne, which is a small town close to Doncaster in South Yorkshire.

At differing times they had two houses in Thorne, the second being a quite grand detached house, which he named ‘Shotover’ after ‘Shotover Hill’ which was one of the favourite family haunts just outside Oxford.

However the bombshell for life at Thorne came on 25 January 1975, which was the date of the entirely unexpected and sudden death of his father Henry. Following that, the decision was taken to return to Oxfordshire, probably to be near his mother and within a few months he had found a position teaching mathematics at the Lower School in Wallingford.

The return to Oxfordshire was quite hurried and as they had not yet found a house, they lived for a short while with Harry’s mother. There were a couple of false starts with the search for a house, but they eventually found the house in Chaucer Court in Ewelme. They moved in in January 1976 and Harry and Gillian lived there ever since.

Following a minor hospital operation Harry took early retirement from teaching in the mid 1980s and briefly worked as an administrator at the John Radcliffe Hospital. After that he worked as a delivery driver for a firm of photographic suppliers in Chalgrove, before his final job, which was in the office of Grundon’s, here in Ewelme. He retired in the mid 1990s.

I say ‘retired’ but Harry never really retired and remained active with his many hobbies and past times right up to the end. He also greatly enjoyed the company of his granddaughters Alison and Charlotte.

As a teenager he took up Morris Dancing and eventually became the ‘Squire’ of the Headington Quarry Morris team. It was during this time that he took up the Piano Accordion and he was a very accomplished player. As we leave the church we will hear Harry playing the accordion and the music as we came in is a well known Headington Quarry Morris tune played by William Kimber.

As children, one of our earliest memories is of him playing his ‘Squeeze Box’ and he often played the ‘Trumpet Hornpipe’ which is more commonly known as the theme tune to Captain Pugwash. He even played at birthday parties so our friends and ourselves would jump around to his playing while we enjoyed music chairs and musical bumps. He often played in the evenings after we had gone to bed and quite how we were supposed to go to sleep while he played the lively Captain Pugwash is a mystery.

Both Harry and Gillian were very active on the folk dancing scene. They were members of several folk dancing groups. I remember ‘Sunday Club’, which was a traditional folk dancing group which met in the village hall at Wolvercote regularly on Sunday afternoons. I think that some of you present today were members of ‘The Friendly Folk’ and ‘Bodgers Wood’ and, in recognition of his contribution to folk dancing in Oxfordshire some of you kindly made a gift and presented him with a plaque marking his contribution. We have placed the plaque on the coffin in recognition.

Harry was a big fan of radio and TV comedy from the 1950s and 60s. He was particularly keen on ‘Hancocks Half Hour’ and he had an almost complete collection of Hancock’s records and cassettes.

You have to be ‘of a certain age’ to remember cassettes, but Harry had hundreds. Only last week Caroline and I were sorting through some of these and we came across one labelled ‘David and Caroline as children’. We were very puzzled by this as we would not think what this could be. It is not easy to find cassette recorders these days but after searching around the house we eventually found one. With great expectations we put the cassette into the recorder and, what did we hear…Hancock’s Half Hour – he had recorded Hancock over the top of us!

Harry was a very intelligent man with many talents. Sadly cooking was NOT one of them. Caroline recalls that one day Gillian had gone to work on a late shift. She usually left a meal to warm up but on this occasion she had not done so. Harry was fully in charge of preparing our evening meal…so we got…cornflakes!

A popular toy during the 1950s and 60s – less so today, was Meccano and Harry was a great fan. I was not keen on Meccano. I preferred Lego and there were many animated discussions about the relative merits of the two. Unknown to me, one day when I was away at university Harry decided to have a clear out. I returned at the end of term, to find a ten pound note in the bedroom!!!  Harry had put an advert in the local paper and sold the lot! Conversely, Harry’s huge Number 10 Meccano set, plus much more Meccano besides, is still upstairs at Chaucer Court.

Harry and Gillian lived in Ewelme for almost 50 years and were very happy together. Gillian’s sudden death in December was a huge sadness for Harry and he missed her terribly. They will be together again now.