The Deerstalkers of Welshpool

The Society

 
 The founder: Roy Upton-Holder

    The Deerstalkers of Welshpool was formed in March 2001 by Roy Upton-Holder, a woodwind teacher by profession, who has been a keen Holmes enthusiast since 1950.
   Though born in Shrewsbury, he moved to London in 1951 to study the clarinet and saxophone at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1999 he moved to Welshpool, and decided to form a Sherlock Holmes Society after having met several people who expressed an interest in the great fictional (?) detective.
    The majority of members live within a radius of 25 miles of Welshpool but some do come from further afield, including one who lives in Lewes,  Sussex, one in Sunderland and one in Glasgow.
    In October 2001, the actor Roger Llewellyn, who has toured the world performing Sherlock Holmes ...the last act ! , a play written specially for him by David Stuart Davies (founder of The Northern Musgraves, and editor of the magazine Sherlock ) kindly accepted an invitation to become president of the Deerstalkers.

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Extract from issue 38 of the Baker Street Bugle

Profile on Deerstalker

 Roy Upton-Holder

    I was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, in 1930 and was educated at the Priory Boys Grammar School.  At the age of 16½ I decided to play the clarinet after having heard the late Reginald Kell broadcast Weber’s Concertino for Clarinet.  My parents were not particularly musical, though my brother Raymond,  over four years older than me, is a professional pianist.

Having left school at 16 I worked in the Borough Surveyor’s Office ( now called The Director of Technical Services!  -  ah well,  ‘a rose by any other name’ ) until I went to study clarinet and ‘cello at The Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, at the age of twenty

    Just before I went to the Guildhall, I was in hospital for a couple of weeks, and whilst convalescing at home my father bought me two volumes of Sherlock Holmes stories,  - the four and the fifty-six.  I can’t remember which one I started to read but I can remember the time I started to read it 10.00 pm and I didn’t put the book down until 4.30 am the next day.  A Sherlock Holmes enthusiast was born that day in 1950.

     In 1951 the Festival of Britain, an idea thought up to our morale a lift after the ordeal of World War Two, also included the Sherlock Holmes Exhibition of 1951 which I duly visited  -  twice, by the way.  The feeling of walking where SH had trod ( in our imaginations ) in Baker Street and the surrounding area was wonderful. 

      London was ( and still is  ) Holmes’ headquarters, so every where I went reminded me of one of his cases.

     I taught clarinet, flute and saxophone at home, where I had a large practice, and for the London Borough of Barnet as a peripatetic teacher.

     In 1970, I formed the first clarinet choir ( an orchestra of six different sizes of clarinet ) in Britain, and so for the next few years was busy writing arrangements, over 160, for this combination.  But Holmes was never far away, - in fact, in my teaching room at home there were not only musical ornaments but also Holmes and Battle of Britain ( another of my interests ) memorabilia.  Pupils used to tell me that when they came for their first lesson they didn’t feel overwhelmed by music, and that I might be human after all, not just a fanatical musician!

     Over the teaching years I made many friends through Holmes, of pupils and their parents.  One parent made me a silhouette of Holmes in wood which is on the door of our computer room at 146 ;  another ( who worked for London Underground ) gave me a special tile from Baker Street Station ( I had it framed and it is on the stairway of 146 ).

      In 1977 Joan and I were married, and in 1999 we moved from London to Welshpool, where upon we both joined Welshpool Music Club of which we eventually became joint secretaries.  A fellow member of the club, Reverend Philip Harratt, came around to our house to discuss music matters one day, and during the course of conversation I happened to mention the name Sherlock Holmes, as one does, and he said that he also was a Holmes enthusiast.  I mentioned that it was a pity  there wasn’t a Sherlock Holmes Society in Welshpool and that I had thought about forming one. Philip said “If you form one, I’ll be the first member”.    And that’s how the Deerstalkers got started. 

   I have been a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, the Priory Scholars of Leicester, and am still a member of the Six Napoleons of Baltimore.

    As a peripatetic woodwind teacher I spend a lot of time travelling in the car, and what better way of passing the time away than listening to a Sherlock Holmes story on CD  -  there are some excellent CDs in our library.

     Whilst I would not describe myself as a Holmes scholar, I am a Holmes enthusiast  -  I must be  - our house is called Baskerville, one garden shed is 221b, the rockery is Grimpen Mire, our previous cat was named Sherlock, our present cat is Mycroft and his summer house is called The Diogenes Club!

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More information about the Deerstalkers can be found on the  website  -  www.bbc.co.uk/wales/mid/sites/welshpool/pages/deerstalkers.shtml
                or  phone Roy on 01938 554 840                                    
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