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Reg Saville MemorialVisitors to the website will soon discover that without Reg Saville there would have been no Langton Matravers Local History and Preservation Society.
Before he died he was adamant in the way only Reg could be that he did not wish to have a large funeral and that wish was honoured by his family when they and no-one else laid him to rest in the village cemetery. However, ‘the village’ would not let him go without a Celebration of his Life and every seat was taken for an event which took place on 6 March 2019 with members of his family present and pleased to be so! What follows are unedited notes from the memory of Reg’s life given by David Selman with the aid of others who knew him well. REG SAVILLE MEMORIAL WEDNESDAY 6 MARCH 2019 Reg was a fine man and I am honoured to stand here now and lead our memories as we recall what he meant to us, and to the village that was so much part of his life. To do Reg real justice we will need to be here at least until the sun goes down…tomorrow or the day after. But all being well you’ll be able to get home in time for the ten-o-clock news…and I do mean today’s news! ‘I don’t want a fuss’, he said! ‘No panegyrics!’. Well, Reg, right now you’re not in a position to answer back…so be quiet and listen! ‘A fine man’, I said a moment ago! He terrified me! I knew him as a child…seventy years ago…when we both lived in The Hyde. I remember him sweeping into the village when he came down from London or wherever…a very dapper man with a striking moustache…fast on his feet…urgent in whatever he was doing…quick to protest…and with a tendency to not suffer fools gladly! Can you believe that? I began to know him better and fear him less when I joined the Church choir…and a very fine choir it was! Nearly forty robed choristers! We did very well when we were being led by Reg’s and David’s mother, Bea Saville, the organist. But we really hit the heights when Reg was home for special services or on holiday and took charge. He would shout at us children. He would shout at his mother. He would shout at his brother. He would wave his arms like some furiously out-of-control windmill as he conducted…but by goodness he drove us to a very high standard! He was a superb musician and a very talented composer. Did you know that our choir was the very first church choir to broadcast the Sunday morning service live on BBC radio? I wonder why we were considered good enough for that! Was it to do with Reg? We obviously did well because the BBC came back subsequently on a couple of occasions. We all felt rather famous! But that’s enough from me…for the time being! There are many people who would have wanted to stand here now in support of Reg…but for a very obvious reason that is no longer possible so we can think of them now…having a celestial chat with Reg somewhere on high! One of them would certainly have been someone whom I can best describe as being the village’s female version of Reg…for Cis Bower, like him, was someone who was tireless herself…but also had the talent to get things done through other people. We are fortunate then, that in the absence of Cis, we have two of her daughters, Jasmine and Veronica, who felt that they would like to honour Reg’s memory… …Reg’s War Experiences We sometimes tell people visiting the museum that Langton Won the War…and mostly we are suggesting that victory was derived from the invention of radar that was developed in this very village! However…that is not really correct! The truth of the matter is that as a young man Reginald John Saville went to war to save the world and spent several years in North Africa and Italy. Five years ago Reg published a book about his wartime experiences and it is a thoroughly good read…written in the style that only dear Reg could conjure up…and consequently I have to be very careful about what I say now because it seems that Reg had more personal adventures than bloody battles, and it is laced with a large number of rather risqué tales of life at home and abroad! Who would have thought, for example, that on one occasion, when home on leave, Reg was bed-bound with a fever caused by a severe cut to his big toe which prevented him from returning on time to his unit in the North of England. Apparently, Reg says, he was four weeks overdue and because some paperwork went astray he was posted as Absent Without Leave. As a result the military and civilian police were looking for him all over the country and when he got to the railway station in Huddersfield he was thrown into a cell, charged with Desertion in Time of War, and only managed to avoid a firing squad by employing all the considerable charm and wit he could muster when taken before a senior officer! There are many such stories so, in choosing an extract from his book, we have had to be very careful lest Reg’s memory be sullied, and Simon is now going to read a passage that you will discover brings Reg’s war well and truly home to Langton…and yes, it is indeed Simon…though you could be mistaken for he resembles his father so closely! …Simon Saville reading from My Wartime Experiences On the afternoon of our second day in Caserta, when Ryan was on the set, I wandered along the dusty streets. The shops, at least in this quarter, had no shop windows, but the little shuttered windows stood open to admit air and light, whilst the goods for sale were piled on either side of the open doorways. One such shop sold religious objects, so I went in and looked around. I saw the top of a Processional Crucifix, ready to be fitted to a pole. The proprietor, an earnest little man, told me that he had made this himself, using metals from the Sanctuary of the bombed church of San Spirito in Naples. He explained that it was a replica of the golden crucifix carried in procession before His Holiness the Pope in St Peter‘s, Rome, and I knew that this was correct. I conversed at some length with this shopkeeper, trying out my Italian. He told me that the Americans had bombed the church. I said that I was not surprised, for the saying went that “When the British bombers come overhead, the Germans run for cover. When the German planes come over, the British run for cover. But when the American planes are spotted, everyone, including other Americans, run for cover.” Now Langton Matravers Parish Church had never had a processional cross of any kind, although it had a large robed choir of some thirty-seven members, which often processed. So, after sleeping on the matter, as I usually do when a decision has to be made, I went back and purchased the item, much to the delight of the little shopkeeper. It was packed away in my kit and sent back home after the war had ended. However, the Rector, the Reverend E.J. Tadman, would not accept the figure of Our Lord on it, so this was unscrewed and kept at my parents’ home, unknown to me. After I had been demobilized we had a new Rector, the Reverend Douglas O’Hanlon, who had been an RAF Chaplain, and he asked why there was a hole in the middle of the cross. When they explained, he asked for the figure to be replaced, and it has remained in position ever since. At the age of 17 my young brother became the crucifer who carried the cross in and out from Vestry to Chancel every time there was a choir service. Parish Clerk Another way in which Reg gave committed service to Langton Matravers was as Parish Clerk for thirty-seven years from 1971 to 2008! Now, lest you think otherwise, this was nothing to do with the Church but more to do with the political and administrative life of the village! During those thirty-seven years Reg saw Councillors come and go, and Chairmen come and go…but he remained constant. It put him in a position of considerable influence and he, of course, was equal to the task! I had hoped that a councillor of Reg’s era would be able to say a few words about him now…but for a variety of very good reasons, including death, that has not been possible. So I am relying on my own long-gone father who was Chairman from 1984 to 1990 for a few memories. He held Reg in very high regard and used to say that nothing could happen in the village if you didn’t have Reg on your side! He was a brilliant Clerk! You want to build an extension? Talk to Reg about it! You want the pavement in the High Street repaired? Talk to Reg about it! You want the cemetery tidied up? Talk to Reg about it! And so it went on…but people have also told me how meticulous and efficient he was in discharging the duties of Clerk…and how meetings of the Parish Council were always lively affairs…with him frequently causing our sombre elected representatives to erupt in laughter with his jokes, stories, and occasional lapses into Darzet dialect. He was also quite a salesman on behalf of the village. Shortly after a funeral about twenty years ago that we had both attended he asked me whether I had reserved a plot in Crack Lane Cemetery. A strange question! He went on to say that the cemetery was filling up and I needed to hurry because all the best plots would soon be gone. Such was the panic he created in me that the very next day I went to his office and paid for a splendid plot for Betty and me! It was a bargain, because the price has subsequently increased several times over…but I do hope it won’t be needed for a while yet! But thank you, Reg, for saving me quite a lot of money! And if anyone here is now in a similar panic…I’m open to offers! TIME IS GOING ON…as I said it would…and I need now to focus on some aspects of Reg’s long and productive life that are more closely associated with things historical, as it were! But before we get to the Museum and The Langton Matravers Local History and Preservation Society I’m going to take you back to Reg’s monumental success in 1951! In that year, Reg having won the war, he put his very considerable talents into organising a two-week long Langton Matravers Festival of the Arts as the village’s contribution to The Festival of Britain which was the nation’s ambitious attempt to put the privations of the Second World War behind them. He was granted leave of absence from Harrow on the Hill High School where he was teaching in order to develop a wonderful programme in which there was an event on each of the fifteen days of the Festival…and sometimes two. The events were very varied and included celebratory services in both the Anglican and Methodist churches, orchestral concerts, one-act plays, country dancing, a best garden competition, Open Days at the school, a village exhibition, sports days, camp fires, Maypole Dancing, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, HMS Pinafore, and so on and so on…concluding with the Grand Festival Dance in the Village Hall with music provided by the Eddie Francis Broadcasting Band from Bournemouth…and all of this was conceived and planned by Reg and played by the people and for the people of this small village which was home to such a wide range of talent. Reg, only 28 at the time, was the inspirational driving force behind a tremendously successful event. So successful it was, that ‘our’ Festival was judged with two others in Essex to have been to have been joint winners of the national competition for the best event, and as a result Reg had to travel to Broadcasting House in London to be interviewed on live radio by Ralph Wightman in a Sunday afternoon broadcast called Country Matters. Fame indeed. But well-deserved! And a tangible link from this day back to 1951 can be seen in the Village Sign just outside the Church which was beautifully re-furbished by Mike Collins last year. It was designed by Reg to commemorate The Festival of Britain and his design was approved by The College of Heralds. Reg clearly had a talent for organising large scale events because he didn’t rest on his laurels…and inspired the most unlikely of people to do their bit to support him! In 1964 he wrote and produced The Pageant of Langton which illustrated the history of the parish in thirteen scenes from Celtic times to the 1950s. It was held in the open-air on the lawns of the Rectory as it was then and acted by over one-hundred characters from the village. Scenes included a visit by St Aldhelm whilst awaiting favourable winds to sail from Wareham; the restoration of the Monarchy and the Established Church in 1660; and Langton during the Second World War. The Pageant was a huge success…worthy of a Rural Oscar! I come now, in conclusion, to what is arguably Reg’s greatest legacy to the village…and I am indebted to Jim Bradford for providing some of the background to the development of the Museum and the creation of the Local History and Preservation Society which occurred before my time. In 1971 the inaugural meeting of the society was held at Leeson House and almost immediately three members who had their own collections of local bygone artefacts, documents, and photographs brought their collections together for an exhibition at Leeson one Saturday. This proved very popular and immediately afterwards hundreds of other items were received leading to a collection which grew to in excess of 22000 items by the end of the Twentieth Century…all meticulously catalogued by you know who! Clearly there was scope for a museum and in 1974 Reg, with the help of Jim, opened the Parish Museum in a small room opposite the Post Office which had once been a Butcher’s Shop and then Sunnyside Dairy! Seven exhibitions of village life were mounted in sequence and such was their success that when the Quarrying and Stonemasonry exhibition was about to be taken down in 1989 there was so great a public outcry that the Society leased the former Coach House and Stables from the Parochial Church Council and the Museum as we know it now was born! The rest is history. The Purbeck Stone Museum and Langton Matravers Museum gained National Accreditation and really is a gem that receives great praise from its visitors. We really must honour Reg’s memory by doing our best to keep it going. But Reg’s contribution to Local History was not just the museum! He was a man of immense erudition…even if from time to time I felt that what he didn’t know he made up!!! In fact Jim told me that on one occasion during the interval half way through one of his talks in the Village Hall about the geology of Purbeck he went up to Jim and whispered ‘It’s all a load of nonsense, you know!’. Be that as it may…Reg’s scholarship was remarkable. >>> He wrote around forty books for the Society, many of which needed huge research on geological and medieval topics causing him to spend countless hours in the archives of Dorset County Museum. >>> He transcribed the inscriptions on all the tombstones in the Churchyard and the Old Cemetery and this has proved invaluable to people researching their family. >>> He produced more than twenty-five genealogical charts of local families. >>> Mention an old village family and off the top of his head he could give you chapter and verse going back for several generations. >>> Until very recently he gave up to six talks a year on behalf of the Society and was often invited to perform elsewhere. >>> He led guided walks throughout the parish from North Hill to Dancing Ledge and Acton, the last only two years ago at the age of 94! >>> He organised coach trips each summer to various places of interest in Dorset stopping en route to give a brief talk about a village or a notable person who lived there. >>> The list of what Reg did could go on and on and there should be little surprise therefore that in 2004 he was awarded the MBE for services to local history. But, as always, Reg did not want a fuss and refused to go to see The Queen at Buckingham Palace…so the insignia came to him through the intervention of the Lord Lieutenant of Dorset! Had he actually gone to meet Her Majesty it would have given her a bit of a shock because she wouldn’t have been able to get a word in edgeways. He’d probably have embarked on one of his outrageous stories…given either in Dorset dialect or the posh voice he reserved for posh people! Outrageous stories? What…Reg? Who will ever forget the scandalous tales he would tell either in one of his talks or on meeting him in the street! Who will ever forget the amazingly funny and sometimes rather naughty characters he would portray as part of the annual vaudeville shows he would put on at Christmas…my own favourite being Reg as a deaf old man with an ear trumpet! Reg the Scholar was unrivalled for what he knew, what he discovered, and what he taught us about Langton Matravers and the Isle of Purbeck…he truly could be spoken of as Mr Langton! No-one will ever know more about the village and its forebears than he. We have lost an unparalleled and irreplaceable source of knowledge. Reg the Man was passionate about achieving his goals and prepared to work hard to be sure to gain the success he was seeking. >>> He was a great actor who loved nothing more than to play to his audience…but perhaps to some extent this was some kind of a ploy which shielded him from the world. >>> He was also a very good friend to many…but woe betide you if you crossed him >>> He was articulate and a great fighter for his many causes >>> A man of immense wit and humour who would amuse and sometimes irritate in equal measure >>> A man of sincere religious faith who was at times troubled by the direction his Church seemed to be moving >>> A man who lived his life in a precise kind of way…but what a wonderful life it was. Reginald John Saville MBE will be greatly missed. No more will we see him walking the streets of the village in his black suit, black coat, and black hat, and probably carrying a black bag…but that image will remain with all of us who knew him, and he will not be forgotten. Reg was one of a kind. The mould has been broken. It cannot be replaced. But we must rejoice that for most of his 96 years he lived here with us in the village he loved. |
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