Frederick Stratten Russell, 3 November 1897 - 5 June 1984

Abstract

Frederick Stratten Russell’s father, William Russell, was an accomplished man who had read classics at Oxford after winning a scholarship to Exeter College. His family had lived mostly around London and many of them were musical, some earning their living as music-wire drawers, and others were schoolteachers. After graduation William became a schoolmaster and taught classics and music in Forest School, Walthamstow. Following his marriage to Lucy Binfield Newman, many of whose family had been dentists, he moved to Bridport on the south coast of Dorset and founded St Andrew’s, a small preparatory school. It was in Bridport that Frederick Stratten Russell was born on 3 November 1897 (the name Stratten being a family name that he shared with his uncle, George). Frederick had one sister, who died when she was quite young, and a brother, William, who was later killed in the Battle of the Somme in World War I. In 1903, when Frederick was about six years old, his father decided, on account of his wife’s health, to move to Newquay in North Cornwall and to establish there a new St Andrew’s School. In Newquay the Russells lived on East Pentire Head, and nothing makes this period seem so remote to those now living in Cornwall as Frederick’s memory that there were then only four houses on the headland and that the Russells generally had the Fistral Beach entirely to themselves. Soon after arriving in Newquay his father became organist at Crantock Church. The journey to Crantock from Newquay entailed crossing the Gannel estuary, and William did this twice on every Sunday. Freddie had vivid recollections of accompanying his father when crossing the Gannel at high tide in a rowing boat on dark and stormy winter nights, journeys on which he was allowed to carry the paraffin hurricane lamp.