Berkhamsted Local History & Museum Society and Berkhamsted & District Archaeological Society lost another stalwart of Berkhamsted’s Heritage scene when Eric Holland passed away on 21 Aug 2014 at Watford General Hospital. Eric was a Londoner who came together with his classmates at Fleet Road Junior School, Hampstead, as an evacuee to Berkhamsted, where he lived with a family in Castle Street. He was an intelligent, knowledgeable man who but for the War would probably have attended a Central School in London and stayed on longer at school and obtained more qualifications. This was a matter of regret for him, but Berkhamsted became his home and he joined St Peter’s Church choir and was apprenticed as a compositor at Clunbury Press. He married Olive and they have a son and a daughter.
Eric was a modest man with a dry sense of humour, which his daughter tells me he kept almost to the end. His contribution to Berkhamsted’s historical and archaeological scene was immense. He carried out a great deal of research, took many photographs and made copies of older ones. He was instrumental in choosing topics and selecting photographs for a number of exhibitions. When the Berkhamsted Local History & Museum Society was successful in setting up the Castle Visitor Room Eric provided the guided tour and took the series of accompanying photographs, which went in the user-friendly Castle booklet. Eric was prominent also in contributing to the Old Buildings Sub-Committee in the 1970s and the Historic Gardens Group in the 1990s. It was appropriate that he was the Society’s President in 2010 when we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Society.
I have always been aware how much Eric has done but it was not until his daughter asked me if she could see his ‘collection’ and I did a search on MODES that I learnt how much that was. We have photographic records of monuments, brasses and monumental inscriptions of St. Peter’s and of Rectory Lane Cemetery. We have a recording of his memories as an evacuee, and of a town history walk and also reports on many local buildings and the transcriptions of important documents. Added to all that are occasional reports relating to Eric’s love of archaeology.
When in the 1970s it was decided to set up the Berkhamsted & District Archaeological Society Eric was one of the first to join and he played a prominent part in excavations at Cow Roast, Northchurch villa and of course in the Iron Age settlement at Bridgewater School just behind his house. He spoke to the pupils about the various finds, explaining details of an Iron Age settlement.
Although in recent years he has no longer been an active member of either Society his legacy remains in the archives of both Societies.
Jenny Sherwood, Nov 2014
Berkhamsted Local History & Museum Society 