Fr Harry was born in Peshawar, India (today part of Pakistan). His mother was from Lancashire. At the age of 8 he was sent to England to Ampleforth school in Yorkshire. He just missed war service, but immediately following the war, he was called up into the Rifle Brigade of the Suffolk regiment. He spent two years in Palestine as part of a peace keeping force. After his demobilisation in January 1948 he went to Oscott to begin training for the priesthood. He was ordained on 30th May 1953, one of the first ordinations of the post war period.
He served in the diocese of Northampton, always in the East Anglian area, and continued his service in the new diocese of East Anglia when was formed in 1975.
He was first a curate in the parish of St Pancras in Ipswich and then at Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge. He was then appointed parish priest at Our Lady of the Annunciation in Kings Lynn. In 1968 he moved to All Souls Peterborough where he remained until 1977. From there he went to St Edmund's in Bury and then on to Norwich, where he was appointed administrator at the Cathedral. His final parish was at Sacred Heart and St Margaret, Dereham. He retired to Cambridge and died on 25th October 2002, eight months short of his golden jubilee of the priesthood.
Fr Harry was known as a 'very human, loving, compassionate and holy priest... noted for his all round pastoral good sense and integrity...'. It is said that he would never spend money on himself, preferring to reuse fellow priests' clothes after their deaths, and once wearing a pin stripe suit which had belonged to his father in 1938. He even appeared once to be wearing a dog collar over a football shirt! When he became a Prelate of Honour he obtained his purple robe from a firm in Birmingham at a fraction of the price of the usual Italian supplier!
During Fr Harry's time at All Souls, Peterborough's Catholic population grew from 8,500 in 1973 to 12,000 in 1980, largely as a result of its development as a New Town. Fr Harry was responsible for many changes which took place both as a response to this growth, and for those changes in liturgy and parish organisation demanded by the second Vatican Council, which had taken place a few years earlier.
Negotiations with Peterborough Development Corporation led to the greater growth of Peterborough's Catholic churches and schools. As chairman of governers, he presided over the reorganisation of St John Fisher school along comprehensive lines, involving the building of new extensions to the school.
A shortage of priests led him to develop a 'team ministry' approach for the emerging townships in Bretton and Orton.
The old All Souls school was converted into a social centre in 1969, to cater for the growing parish.
Fr Harry continued the great changes to the liturgy begun by Canon Taylor after Vatican 11, reorganising the sanctuary in line with the new demands.
Greater lay involvement in parish organisation was instituted at parish council level.
He was chairman of the Peterborough and District Council of Churches
Finally, during his service at All Souls he saw three local men ordained to the priesthood: Frs Phillip Shryane, Peter Leeming and Henry McCarthy.
January 2003