Back to: SingSurf home page Derek Morris
Derek Morris led a full and active life, burning brightly to end. He had so many interests from local history, to geophysics, was involved in many Harpenden and national societies and left a great impact wherever he touched.
Derek Bertam Morris was born 10 June 1932 in Ilford, Essex, to Bert and Ivy Morris. Bertram is an old family name going back several generation both his father and grandfather “pop” were Berts.
When the war started they were evacuated to Amersham. He missed going to grammar school due to spending too much of his English exam trying to find the right name for a character, but did well at the Technical College make many friends there who he continued to keep in touch with.
After the war he signed up for National Service, and his scientific leaning led to him working on weather balloons, up near Dundee. This led on to a couple of years at the Meteorological office.
Then it was onto university, first reading Geology and Physics for his B.Sc., at Queen Mary College, and taking a Shell scholarship for an M.Sc. in Geophysics at Imperial and a DIC in Applied Geophysics, Royal School of Mines. His lodging at St Margaret’s House was clearly influential and made many more close friends, like Dennis Wang who also ended up in Harpenden.
After a couple of year at the Geological Survey, he took a position at Hunting Geology and Geophysics in Boreham Wood. With his new wife Madeline he flew out to Pakistan to carry out a ground water survey in the Porali river basin, and living in tents in this remote region, and trying to convince the locals tribesmen that modern techniques were better than the water diviners. One of the many tails that Derek was fond of recounting was an official visit of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. On the day the heavens open drenching proceedings, the Duke asked Derek why he was in Pakistan and Derek’s responded with “Looking for water” resulting in smiles around.
On return from Pakistan the next task was to find a home. With help of map showing 10 and 20 mile radius circles centred on the office he and Madeline settled on Harpenden, and their son Richard was soon on the way.
Then followed many years at Huntings specialising in airborne geomagnetic surveying, "one of the Giants of British Airborne Geophysics"1 and becoming managing director in 1982.
The work involved many extended trips abroad, travelling much of the world and sometimes taking Richard along with him to places like Venice, Greece, and Luxor, Egypt.
One trip involved travelling to Inner Mongolia, and seemed to consist of the Chinese trying to extract as much free information as possible.
The Saudi proved to be tricky customers, reluctant to pay their bills following a fall in the oil price. This led to financial problems, and the Hunting group deciding to close the Geophysics division. As managing director he was left the unenviable task of breaking the news to the rest of the division. He recounts a miserable art trip to Florence, in a cold wet February knowing he would have to break the news on his return.
In the end Derek managed to secure good deals for most of his employees, he himself had the rights to aeromagnetic data from North Sea and Atlantic and he then went to set up a small consulting company TerraHunt GeoSecience, with Mick McDonough and a few other Hunting people. The firm had a sideline in large format CAD colour plotting. After retiring he kept up his geophysical interest as vice-president of the Mineral Industry Research Organisation.
More details of his geophysical activites in Huntings, TerraHunt and MIRO can be found on the A Life page.
An easier workload allowed Derek to start on the passion that marked the next chapter of his life. It started with researching the family history of the Morris and Parkers families, both based in the East End of London. He managed to get back a few generations before the tail grew cold, but it soon grew into a wider historical interest in the East End of London.
Derek had a unique approach to local history, drawing upon old tax
records to get a detailed view on exactly what every person in a
neighbourhood was doing. This often proved to be counter to the
preconceptions of area and revealed a quite diverse neighbourhoods.
One
reviewer describes his books
as examples of how local history books should be written,2,
and one professor said that "A creative historian such as he was are rare".3
The work led to the publication of four books with his
co-author Ken Cozens, on Mile End, Wapping, Whitechapel, and Shadwell
and Ratcliff. All in the early modern period of 1600-1800. Many other
articles, talks and guided walks also resulted.
One particular resident was Captain James Cook, which led to another research interest, with several publish articles, and his last talk on Cook’s scientific contributions given to the Harpenden UNA’s science group, only a couple of months ago.
If that was not enough he also was a key contributor to the Place in the Sun project, transcribing, old Sun Insurance records, for use by family tree researchs and local historians.
He was a key part of Harpenden life, being chair of the United Nations Association, a member of the Probus club, the Local History Association, the bridge club and the unofficial 925 club, consisting of various people who used to board the first cheep-day train up to London for their own research projects, many lively discussions followed. For Derek a good week would consist of a different lunchtime meeting everyday, preferably with food, wine and a good conversation. When he was a little younger he was a keen squash player, and was runner up in in the UK over 65’s Squash Championship, 1989.
Family was always key to Derek's life, while being an only son he had many cousins on both the Morris and Parker sides of the family, and would take his son Richard to many gatherings with a sometimes confusing array of second cousins. Even though he split from his wife Madeline, they kept in good contact keeping an eye out for each other, and Derek maintained good contact with her nieces and nephews, the Bedfords and Udens.
One of the Bedford girls described Derek as indestructible, and indeed that seemed to be the case, still going strong into his 90’s, and always keen for a political debate, curry and wine whenever his son turned up. There was only perhaps the slight sign of slowing down. But then a worry about a cough that turned into covid, a couple of week in hospital and an unexpected phone call.
Derek will leave many memories for many people. Many, who due to age and ill health many can’t be here today have written with fond memories, and interesting snippets from his life.
An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm'd,
Few heads with knowledge so inform'd;
If there's another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.
Back to: SingSurf home page Derek Morris