Remembering Septimus Harrison
by J B Harris
"There was a general fury when the new water tower was built (1), a structure out of all proportion to its surroundings. Apparently there was nothing to stop Sep Harrison, a local solicitor who owned the waterworks doing what he liked (2) and he did. My brother hit a number seven iron shot from near the fifteenth green, which landed nicely on top.
Although I did not really get to know Sep until after the War, it is worth saying a word about him. He was hideous of visage, a bald head above bushy eyebrows with a long, raking snout above some ill-kempt grey whiskers. But he was a superb and beautiful athlete: his golf swing was a joy and he looked perfectly placed at a snooker table. He was also a very good bridge player. Everything he had - or had done - was bigger or better than anyone else's. He claimed to have stood in the slips with Johnny Douglas bowling and taken a seemingly endless series of catches (3). His bat weighed nearer five pounds than four - extreme, even in the Botham age....
...One winter there was a sharp frost and it was possible to go skating on Reydon Smear. Sep Harrisson was a superb skater but chose to demonstrate this to me by whisking me about a mile, leaving me to learn to skate by making my way back unaided"
(1) 1937
(2) Not quite true; he was Secretary to the Southwold Waterworks Company which had introduced Southwold to a piped water supply in 1886.
(3) Lenny Septimus Harrisson had played for Lincolnshire in the Minor Counties Championship between 1907 and 1910 |