Michael Walter Farr

This obituary is the copyright of the Journal of the Society of Archivists (30:1, April 2009) and we are very grateful to the editor - our Fellow Alexandrina Buchanan - and to the authors - Mark Booth, Richard Chamberlaine-Brothers, Monica Ory and Christine Woodland - for permission to reproduce it here.

Michael Walter Farr (21 December 1924- 25 June 2009) was the second son of Paul and Elsie Farr of Claygate, Surrey.  He attended King’s College School, Wimbledon from where he obtained an exhibition to Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1942. As was common in the Second World War, his time in Cambridge was split and his degree was completed after war-time service in the Royal Navy. He gained a BA in Modern Languages (a 2:1 in French and German) in 1948. He received an MA in History at the University of Birmingham in December 1959. His thesis on the ‘Accounts and Surveys of the Wiltshire Lands of Adam de Stratton, 1269-1289’ was published by the Wiltshire Record Society, Devizes, 1959, v. 14. He became an FRHist S in 1960 and FSA in 1968.

His war service (1943-1946) was in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a Sub-Lieutenant. He was a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm. He served in Canada and Sri Lanka, and would describe his days as a learner pilot flying over the Clyde. An appointment in 1948 as a probationer in the Colonial Service was cancelled when a medical examination revealed TB in one lung, probably contracted while in the Navy. Fortunately his father was able to pay for him to go to recuperate at Davos in Switzerland. While there he read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, a notoriously complex and elusive book, composed while the author himself was being treated for consumption at Davos. Michael’s characteristic comment was that it was an interesting experience.

He was on the London archives course in 1950-1951 when he met his wife Brenda (née Tidman). Both Michael and Brenda were appointed as assistant archivists at Staffordshire Record Office in March 1952. They married in October 1952. He became first assistant archivist in August 1953.  Marguerite Gollancz, Staffordshire County Archivist, was not happy at the suggestion that both her assistant archivists would be away from the office on honeymoon at the same time. Michael became Senior Assistant Archivist in Warwick on 1 June 1955. He became County Archivist on 18 October 1967, the day after his predecessor A C (Tony) Wood retired. Michael himself retired on 20 December 1989.    

His time at Warwick County Record Office is marked by many achievements. Major catalogues and surveys concluded include: Campbell, Brown & Ledbrook, solicitors, 1958; Lord Leicester Hospital, 1959; Throckmorton of Coughton Court, c 1960-1962 ; Finch-Knightley of Packington Hall, 1964; Dormer of Grove Park, 1964; Fetherstone-Dilke of Maxstoke Castle, 1965-1966; Dugdale of Merevale, 1967; Shuckburgh of Shuckburgh, 1969 and a major collection of canal records, which he conserved as well as catalogued. 

Michael had many practical talents. He was instrumental in the office acquiring and operating a microfilm camera and an antique Photostat machine. He collected the records from the various district councils in 1973 (several tons of paper, all collected in his Ford Transit van). He was instrumental in the recovery of records from Packington Hall after the fire in 1979, and the microfilming of the remains. He was responsible for writing the design brief and organizing the move to the new record office in Priory Park in November 1973. But he did not merely organize the move: he decided that this should be done by record office staff. He himself made six new trolleys from pieces of former shelving and the like (and the bridges to get them into his Transit van), carefully measuring them so that four could be fitted into the van at a time. The resulting move was smooth (though hard work), with the archives going in their correct order on the shelves without any hiccups.

Michael also led the campaign to purchase the Warwick Castle archives in 1978. The archives are of national significance and the campaign to purchase them was one of the first by a local record office. He had written the section on Warwick Castle and the Castle Estate in vol. VIII of the Victoria County History of Warwickshire (Oxford University Press, London, 1969) so was well placed to point to the value of the archive. The archives were transferred to the record office using the same trolleys and staff in January 1979. The trolleys are still in use in the record office, having been used to transfer the various moves of archives in the 2002-3 refurbishment. Michael was not a man to wear his heart on his sleeve, but clues to his feelings and even passions could occasionally be glimpsed. He hated pretension. His instincts were firmly democratic, although he got on well with local landowners and even accepted the occasional brace of pheasants. He abhorred jargon and cliché and invariably wrote lucid prose. He disliked formal meetings, but always took tea and coffee with the staff, when conversation was rarely about work.    

Michael's historical interests were many and varied and led to major publications. These include The Fetherstons of Packwood in the seventeenth century (Dugdale Society Occasional Papers 18, 1968); Nicholas Eyffeler of Warwick, glazier: executors' accounts and other documents concerning the foundation of his almshouse charity 1592-1621 (Dugdale Society,1977) and The Great Fire of Warwick 1694: the records of the commissioners appointed under an act of Parliament for rebuilding the town of Warwick (Dugdale Society Publications 36, 1992). In his retirement he finished work on the fire of Warwick and then began to prepare an edition of an invaluable record of cases heard by royal justices during an early visit to Warwickshire, the so-called Warwickshire Eyre Roll of 1262. Ill health prevented him from carrying this through to completion but very recently he had handed over his work to Dr Jens Röhrkasten of Birmingham University who has now taken over completion of the edition. Its publication in a year or two will be a fitting memorial to Michael's scholarly contribution to a better understanding of the county's history.    

He sat on many committees, perhaps the one nearest to his heart being the Warwick Society, which he joined in 1967 and of which he was a committee member from at least 1969, and a vice-president for the last few years of his life. He also sat on the committees of the Warwickshire Local History Society (1967-2009), the Dugdale Society (1963-2009), the Warwickshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Coventry Diocesan Advisory Committee for the Care of Churches.    

He had a great and abiding interest and love of the English countryside and was a keen walker and badger watcher, belonging to the Warwickshire Badger Group. He was widely read and always enjoyed a good detective novel. Michael and Brenda were strong supporters of the Labour Party and CND, joining marches in London and visiting Greenham Common at the time of the vigil by the Women's Peace Movement near the cruise missile base. In the 1980s and 1990s they took a number of holidays abroad, travelling each Easter, especially around Italy, on local transport with backpacks. Michael took many photographs on these travels. About this time too they became involved with Servas, an international society whose members offered two days' free hospitality to visitors from abroad. One year no less than 58 people were welcomed to their home. In their turn the Farrs visited Servas members' homes when abroad and made many long term friends in France, Italy, Germany and America. 

Michael and Brenda had three children:  Jane, Simon (died in 1986) and Andrew, and two grandsons, George and William.  Brenda died in January 2007.