Jack & Marion Dell

click Business for Dell Bros.Ltd and other businesses

click Dell for others in this family

Jack Dell

click Families for other local families

Harold 'Jack' Dell born 1920 was the son of Cecil James Dell & Louisa Saunders

Marion Harvey was born in 1933 at 'The Gate', North Dean

Jack and Marion married in 1954

Jack And Marion had 3 children as follows :-

Maureen Dell born 1955 married Christopher Shrimpton in

Robert John Dell born 1959 partner Wendy Plumridge. click Robert & Wendy Dell for more

Anthony Frederick Cecil Dell born 1964 partner Sophie Shaw.

Jack & Marion lived at 'Robmau' Main Road, Lacey Green

comment by Phillip & Elaine Dell. Jack was an avid supporter of Arsenal Football Club and Lacey Green Sports and Social Club, where he played football and cricket for many years. He liked horse racing and followed it. He enjoyed going to the pub with both his brothers, Bill and Bert.

Hallmark November 1998 Obituary. Harold Jack Dell by Ted Mines. (click Ted & Mary Mines for more about Ted)

Jack was one of a diminishing number of residents who - excluding his war service - lived his whole life in Lacey Green. He was the middle son of Cecil and Louisa Dell, the eldest being Bill, and the youngest, Bert. (click Cecil James Dell & Louisa Saunders, Bill & Phyllis Dell and Bert & May Dell for others)

The loss of his father when he was only seven left his mother with little on which to raise a young family - a perpetual struggle in the period following the first World War. Jack attended Lacey Green School, and was a choirboy at St. John’s church for several years. After leaving school at 14, he began his working life in the furniture industry, but his intense dislike of it led him to leave, and he began an apprenticeship as a bricklayer with George Lacey of Princes Risborough, but not long after qualifying as a fully trained bricklayer, war broke out in 1939.

Jack was called up and spent six years in the army, being trained initially as a muleteer for service in Norway, but the fall of Norway to the Germans ended this phase. He then trained as an artillery spotter, his service including the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp, his unit withdrawn however following a typhus outbreak, after which he was posted to India, where his distinguished army career ended.

His experiences as a youngster, and his war service profoundly influenced him; some thought of him as a little tough and autocratic but in truth he was a generous man, always ready to give help and steadfast in his belief in the virtue of family life.

Only those of long memory will remember the contribution he made along with others to the Sports and Social Club and the Village Hall, to keep these institutions in being. Jack’s enthusiasm for village cricket and football, with it’s intense inter-village rivalry was well known, and his altercations with the Rev. Hill of the Hampden side are still remembered with much amusement; in later years he remained a pub games enthusiast, darts and crib being all part of the village scene.

Shortly after the war he and his brother Bill began the building firm of Dell Bros.Ltd., which was to grow to the successful and respected business we know today, run by their sons.

Jack married Marion Harvey in 1954, and to her, his children Maureen, Robert and Anthony, and to his granchildren, he was completely devoted.

It is a privilege to have been a friend.......