'I realised I was witnessing something I would never see again'

LIKE many of his generation Eric Fowell has spent his entire life in his home town.

He first lived with his parents in Hayway in Rushden, until moving around the corner in Spencer Road after marrying in 1955.

From there he ran his own business as a carpenter and joiner for 38 years until he retired.

Eric at home in 2003

So it seemed only natural to Mr Fowell that his lifelong love for his beloved birthplace should extend to preserving and promoting its past.

Over the past 30 years the founder member and former chairman of Rushden and District History Society has personally produced or helped compile numerous pictorial publications about the town.

His vast collection of old photographs and other memorabilia has also been used in exhibitions at Rushden Heritage Centre and converted to slides for his regular film shows to organisations throughout the area.

"The seeds of my interest in local history were sown in my childhood," said Mr Fowell, now 75.

"I remember in 1937 watching workmen taking down and rebuilding the old Feathers Inn and demolishing High Street shops, realising I was witnessing something I would never see again."

Mr Fowell began collecting old postcards of the county in the 1950s, picking them up for pence at local fairs or on holiday. He helped found Northamptonshire Postcard Club in 1975 and was founder member and former chairman of Rushden Collectors' Circle.

He said: "The first local cards I acquired were from Knuston Hall, where I did a lot of work as a carpenter. I also collect other ephemera, the first being an old advert for the former Claridge shoe factory on Skinners Hill, Rushden, where I also worked.

Eric with one of his own books in Rushden Hall

"My interest in local history was inspired by a talk by Maurice and Joyce Palmer, who brought out a pictorial history book on Wellingborough. I thought if they can do that for Wellingborough, I could do the same for Rushden."

Mr Fowell was on a team of five who produced a best-selling pictorial history book of Rushden for the town's Rotary Club in 1979. The same team produced a similar book on Higham Ferrers in 1984, but it wasn't until 1993 that Mr Fowell published the first of three successful volumes of old Rushden pictures under his own name.

"You can learn so much from old pictures of shops and factories," he said.

"I worked up a huge collection, many copied from photographs people kindly loaned me. I now do slide shows on a number of subjects, but I try to include new pictures to make them different each season."

Mr Fowell is a former chairman of Rushden Amenities Society founded in the 1970s to fight council plans to demolish historic Rushden Hall. He also co-founded Rushden and District History Society in 1991 with fellow town historian and author Eric Jenkins.

Mr Fowell, who was the group's second chairman and its only honorary life president, helped produce its quarterly newsletter and provided most of the pictures for its hugely successful millennium book A Thousand Years of Rushden, researched by a committee of 22 members.

He said: "The first 2,000 copies sold very rapidly and we printed another 1,000 copies the following year. We did most of the research in Rushden library and the ET archives. Copies have been dispatched to former residents all over the world."

Wartime memories of bomb blast ERIC Fowell's most vivid boyhood memory was the morning a German bomb dropped on Rushden's Alfred Street School, killing seven children. Aged 3 in front of Rushden Hall door Luckily Eric - then 12 - and sister Jean were in classes either side of the room which took the brunt of the bomb, dropped at 10.16am on October 3, 1940. But it wasn't until the all-clear at the end of the raid that they discovered they had both survived the blast. Mr Fowell said: "We were extremely fortunate. I remember hearing this enormous bang and flakes falling from the ceiling like a snowstorm. Our teacher Buggy Hales shouted 'get under your desks' and got us singing to relieve the tension. The windows were cracked and if they hadn't been covered by sacking we would have been showered with broken glass. "Our headmaster Mr Lawrence then came in and ordered us to the shelters. I remember it was all very calm and orderly - I only saw two children crying. We still didn't realise what had happened at that stage." "My father later collected me from school and as we walked past the debris, he told me not to look, fearing my sister was buried in the rubble. To our relief, before we got to the High Street, Jean came running towards us."

Note: Eric was born at 61 Hayway on 13th October 1928, before
moving to 101 Spencer Road after marrying Jean in 1955.