Christian, Roy: Lovable historian Uncle Roy will be sadly missed

Roy Christian: Lovable historian Uncle Roy will be sadly missed

Maxwell Craven pays a personal tribute to the former teacher Roy Christian, Derby historian and a founder member of Derby Civic Society who was not only respected for his local knowledge and devotion to preserving and promoting Derby’s history but was an irreplaceable and lovable character. But then he was related to that notorious mutineer, Fletcher Christian of The Bounty – as Maxwell recounts.

Notorious mutineer, Fletcher Christian

WHAT obituary of the late and much lamented Derby historian Roy Christian failed to mention was that he was related, albeit distantly, to Fletcher Christian of HMS Bounty fame.

I once asked Roy whether he got fed up with people asking if he was related to Mr Christian. But, being Roy, he was quite happy to admit the blood line and unfazed by his kinsman’s notoriety.

In fact, the family produced a number of distinguished naval officers, of whom the most notable was Admiral Sir Hugh Cloberry Christian.

However, I suspect as a Royal Navy acting Lieutenant Commander in charge of a corvette in the Second World War, the self-deprecating Roy probably identified himself more closely with the officers in Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea than with the admiral.

Roy was actually descended from an old Manx family.

If you go to the island today and open the telephone book, you’ll see loads of Christians, all descendants of John McCrystyn, who died in 1430.

By Charles I’s reign, his descendants had left the Isle of Man and moved to Ewanrigg Hall in Cumberland, after being involved in a revolt against the King of Man, Lord Derby, and leading a subsequent rebellion against Cromwell in 1651.

I got to know Roy when I joined Derby Museum in 1974, and had to prepare town trails to show children how the town grew and what to look for when walking round.

To gen myself up, I tagged on to one of the trails then run by Roy for the Civic Society. From these I learnt practically everything I know, including how to deal with unwanted extra customers obstreperously wielding half empty bottles of British Sherry.

Later, once Derby Environmental Week was up and running from 1976, he and I and a number of other stalwarts would lead well-attended nightly Society trails, usually doing two each.

One year, during this wonderfully successful and much-missed festival, Roy and I decided to diversify and conduct a walk along Markeaton Brook from The Strand.

Little did we realise that we would be faced, on that fine May evening, with 308 eager people.

We split the multitude 40-60 in Roy’s favour – he being past retirement age even then – and by standing on walls and clinging to lamp-posts we managed to bring the whole thing off rather well, arriving at the west end of Markeaton Lane in just under two hours.

Later, when the museum purchased Pickford’s House and staff and Friends of the Museum spent four years restoring it, Roy was frequently there.

However, even he recognised his limitations when the boss, possibly forgetting he was 76, asked him to help me dig up the drive. It was heavy work and I eventually persuaded him to give up. Never did the post-volunteering session in the nearby Greyhound seem so welcome!

Roy was an excellent and concise lecturer, if slightly accident prone. I recall one he gave with John Heath in the Midland Hotel for the Civic Society – of which he was successively chairman and vice-president – when the projector stand collapsed, terminally damaged.

While someone rushed to find a replacement, Roy told John to keep talking as he held the huge projector, pointing it at the screen, for a good 10 minutes, pipe clenched firmly between his teeth.

The books Roy Christian wrote were exemplary. He claimed no-one could read his notes, which were stashed in a series of fitted cupboards in his sitting room. But he did his research well and had the gift of being concise. His books are always a pleasure to read.

His 1978 account of Derbyshire – along with a companion volume on Nottinghamshire (1974) – has not been surpassed. His articles on local country houses for Derbyshire Life, extending over most of the 1960s, seemed somehow to gather the reader into the building and inspired Mick Stanley and I to write The Derbyshire Country House.

His subsequent three-decade series on Derbyshire villages combined a conversational intimacy and erudition that would be impossible to replicate. His method, bearing in mind that he knew every corner of the county intimately, was to bowl up on a nice day and call at the post office. (That was when all villages had them, of course).

There he would inquire after the local founts of wisdom, oldest inhabitants, etc, and repair with them to the pub. The photographer was sent along later with a list of desired subjects. The result was pure magic.

Although I cannot claim a close friendship with Roy, I always found him an amusing companion. He was invariably polite, would always hear you out and never showed irritation.

His tolerance was astonishing and his imperturbability legendary. I asked him if he had honed these valuable skills in the war, to which he replied that life afloat had been more like HMS Troutbridge than HMS Victory.

This was reinforced one rainy October night 25 years ago when he was driving me home after attending a lecture in Derby Museum.

He had just taken delivery of a new car. It was dark by then and he realised, on entering Ford Street, that he had no idea how to dip the headlights. Oncoming cars had begun to flash him angrily.

The traffic was too dense for him to stop and check the handbook, and he had activated about everything else, seated low down and puffing on his trusty pipe.

Eventually, I suggested he tried pushing the steering wheel lever instead of twisting it and, lo and behold, the lights duly dipped.

Roy flashed them exuberantly up and down a couple of times, removed his pipe from his mouth and said: “You should have been my Chief Petty Officer!”

It’s not only me who will miss him, but also the listeners to his long-running Saturday morning radio chats, always on an aspect of local history, and to his commentaries, continued into his last years, of Rams matches for hospital wireless.

“Uncle Roy” as we called him, was entirely lovable and completely irreplaceable.

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