The Society is saddened to learn of the death on the 12th of January 2021, at the age of 92, of Cecil Humphrey-Smith, an honorary Vice-President of our Society, and, as member number nine, present at the founding of the Society in 1974. Born in Burgess Hill, West Sussex in 1928, Cecil’s interest in genealogy was sparked by a love of the churches of his native county, and from the time of first learning to ride a bicycle at the age of eight his favourite pastime was the study of these medieval treasures. By 1956 he had visited each of the 800 or more churches three or more times, and recorded every single coat of arms. He recalled that his interest in heraldry was encouraged and developed by H. J. P. Pocock, the chemistry master at Hurstpierpoint College, which he attended from 1941-47. He was further encouraged by Hugh Stanford London, later Norfolk Herald Extraordinary, who had retired to Buxted in Sussex. In 1943 his godfather Julian Bickersteth, M.C. was appointed canon residentiary at Canterbury Cathedral. This was the year following the devastating blitz raids on that city, and it was in these inauspicious times that Humphrey-Smith began his lifelong association with its cathedral.
In 1947 he was involved with the foundation of the Heraldry Society. He went on to study biochemistry and the diseases of plants at the University of London, before embarking on a career in agronomy. For many years he was the man from the Heinz Corporation who said yes or no to tomato crops in the Po Valley. This brush with vegetation in no way detracted from his growing passion for family history and heraldry, and neither did a near fatal car accident suffered near Piacenza in 1955. By the late 1950s he was giving 12 and 24 week courses in heraldry and genealogy respectively for the London University department of extra-mural studies, leading to a diploma. He was keen to promote a concept of family history as opposed to mere pedigree work, as elaborated by him in a water-shed lecture given at Sunbury-on-Thames in 1957. Thoughts moved on to the establishment of his own educational establishment, with the encouragement of Julian Bickersteth who was a noted educationalist and former headmaster. He was actively aided in this aim by his father Frederick Humphrey-Smith, M.B.E., who was an accountant and company secretary. The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies became established in medieval buildings at Northgate in Canterbury, in 1961, with Cecil as its Principal. The following year he began the journal Family History for which he went on to supply a prolific number of articles over the following fifty years. His own painstaking researches were converted into a steady stream of books over the remaining decades of his life, some of which will continue to be much used for the foreseeable future. These included General Armory Two (1973), Anglo-Norman Armory, vol. 1 (1973), An Atlas and Index of Parish Registers (1974), A Genealogist’s Bibliography (1985), Anglo-Norman Armory, vol. 2 (1993) and Armigerous Ancestors (1997).
The formation of the Kent FHS stemmed from the first English Genealogical Congress, held at the University of Kent in April 1974. Royston Gambier, the moving force behind that formation, was helped by staff at the Institute, and the minutes of the inaugural meeting of the Society in June 1974 include thanks to Cecil, along with Duncan Harrington and Colin Parry, for making the arrangements. Cecil offered to help with the editing of the Society's Journal, and to supply two typists to write it up.
Although Cecil was not on the whole involved in the day-to-day work of the Society, he assisted in many ways, not least in the 1980s, when he provided the lecture room at the Institute as a home for the monthly meetings (at this stage, the Society still only had the Canterbury branch).
A lifetime of energetic contributions to his particular areas of interest led to many accolades. These included Fellowships of the Heraldry Society in 1960, of the Society of Genealogists in 1970, and of the Society of Antiquaries in 1982, while in 1976 he was elected as an Academician of the International Academy of Heraldry. In 2004 he received his highest accolade, on becoming an officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to education in heraldry and genealogy. Finally, in 2008 he received an honorary Fellowship of Canterbury Christ Church University.
His final years were difficult. He was badly injured in a second car accident in 2005, and Alice, his beloved wife of 65 years, predeceased him in 2017. But although increasingly housebound, his brain remained agile, and he died peacefully of old age at his home in Seasalter.
Paul A Fox (1249).