FREDERICK HENRY BURCHELL

Newspaper Article

This article about 'Harry' appeared in the Bristol Evening Post on Tuesday April 28 1959:

WEST COUNTRY DIARY - "WORKED 70 YEARS IN SAME ROOM"

Few men become a legend in their own lifetime and probably fewer still achieve a record of working in the same room for 70 years.

Both these distinctions, however, are held by Mr, F. H. Burchell, Thornbury's Deputy Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

It was in 1889, exactly a decade before the first shots were fired in the Boer War, that Mr. Burchell, then a boy of 15, left school and went to work as a junior for a Thornbury firm of solicitors.  Today, 70 years later, he still works in the same first floor solicitor’s office in the centre of the village, to which he travels six times a week from his home in Gloucester Road, Thornbury.

40,000 certificates
For the past 40 years, Mr. Burchell, a widower, has been the deputy Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages for the Thornbury district and in that time it is calculated he has issued 40,000 marriage certificates.  The number of births and deaths he has recorded is legion.

At the age of 85 he is certainly one of – if not the - the oldest registrars in the country……. Yet, he told us, “I intend to keep on for a few more years yet.”

The man who has become a legend in his own lifetime in the lovely Gloucestershire village of Thornbury has also created something of a record by having remarkably little time off for sickness.  In fact, the only instance he can recall being away from work was six years ago when he underwent an operation and was absent for about four weeks.

Vicar’s dilemma
By and large the arrangements for the marriages for which he has issued licences have gone smoothly but on one occasion he received an urgent telephone call from a vicar officiating at one wedding.

The bridegroom, it appeared, had ‘lost’ his certificate and the vicar wanted to know whether he could proceed with the ceremony.

Apparently the bridegroom had carried the certificate about with him for some weeks and as it had rubbed against other contents in his pocket the writing was indecipherable and the paper itself was almost worn away.

Mr. Burchell solved the problem by telling the vicar to proceed with the wedding and immediately making out a new certificate.

This page was last updated: 23/03/2007