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Anthony Terence HOOLAHAN

1943 - 2006

Foundation Scholar and Head Prefect, Anthony left school in 1943, volunteered to join the Royal Navy and found himself as a member of the Oxford University Naval Division, combining the study of law with the discipline of learning how to be an ordinary seaman, eventually being commissioned in the Naval Volunteer Reserve.

His first posting was to a small, 900 ton, Flower Class Corvette – HMS Celandine, where as the Anti-Submarine Detection Officer, he was kept extremely busy on their Atlantic patrols, which went as far as Newfoundland and back, helping to protect convoys from enemy action. When the European War ended in 1945, he was immediately posted to a 4000-ton tank landing ship, which was then stationed in Calcutta for the continuing war against Japan. In 1946, after he was demobilised, he resumed his law studies up at Oxford.

As an advocate specialising in defamation, Anthony was a Bencher of the Inner Temple, and at one time Head of Chambers at No. 1. Brick Court, a Recorder of the Crown Court, and latterly in his career, also Commissioner for Social Security, and for Child Support. This busy life notwithstanding, he also found time to interest himself in local affairs, becoming chairman of the Richmond Society for four years, of the trustees of the Richmond Museum for seven years, and a governor of St. Elizabeth’s School for nine years.

A gentle man, with a quiet sense of humour, overly modest of his significant abilities and achievements, patriotic, loyal, stoical, he lived by his Christian beliefs and his sense of duty, and the way in which he and his family bore his incapacitating illness was a model of love, courage, and sacrifice.

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