Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Roland was one of four sons to William Crooke, a senior British Indian civil servant and ethnographer, whose name is well respected in the Indian ethnographic community to this day, partly because he gave equal billing to his Indian collaborators in anything they published. Roland and two of his three brothers served in the First World War. His two brothers were both killed during the carnage of the battle of the Somme and Roland was invalided out after suffering wounds at Gallipoli. After the war he resumed his career as a civil servant in the Ministry of Health and moved with his family to Berkhamsted in the early 1920s, where they lived at 95 High Street. He contracted meningitis and died very quickly in early 1931. His wife Edith, known in the family as Mig for unknown reasons, was left with three young sons and extraordinarily little money. Despite this she brought three sons up at 95 High Street, two of whom wen to Berkhamsted Boys School. Hugh ended his career as Cultural Attache in Washington, and Pat became a world-renowned expert in low cost housing. Johh, after becoming a prisoner of war in Thailand, lived and worked in Malaysia for more than 20 years. We are enormously proud of this family and their connection to Berkhamsted. Roland Crooke September 2020