Stourbridge News
Church pioneer dies, aged 97.
11:00am Monday 6th February 2012
A FORMER Stourbridge church pioneer who spent much of his working life at steelworks in Brierley Hill and brickworks in Sedgley has died at the age of 97.
Cyril Richmond, a trailblazing member of Chawn Hill Church, died on January 24.
At a thanksgiving service at The Pentecostal Church, Eve Lane, Dudley, on February 2, Mr Richmond's elder son Andy described his father as "a great father, grandfather and great-grandfather."
Mr Richmond was born on June 23, 1914, in Trinity Street, Brierley Hill, to Albert and Ada Richmond.
Having become a committed Christian at the Exclusive Brethren meeting hall in Brierley Hill, he started his working life in 1928 as an office boy at Brierley Hill’s Round Oak Steel Works.
He was soon promoted to the sales department, then the consigning department, transporting steel all over the UK.
From there his flair for figures led him into the wages office.
In his spare time he built Meccano models and demonstrated them in Read's toy shop in High Street, Brierley Hill.
In the late 1930s he met Freda Joyce Moss and the couple married in October 1939.
However, in the Exclusive Brethren white weddings "were frowned upon as too showy", his son Andy said, so Cyril and Freda were married at Stourbridge Registry Office followed by a meeting at the Heath Street Meeting Room and a small reception above Cranages in Stourbridge High Street.
In the early days of the Second World War, Mr Richmond was called up but he registered as a conscientious objector as he believed strongly that his faith prohibited him from killing. He remained at Round Oak.
The Richmonds' son Andy was born 1941 and Jonathan in 1946.
By 1941 Mr Richmond had been seconded to Baggeridge Brickworks in Sedgley as office manager.
The promotion enabled the family to move to a bigger house in Perrins Lane, Wollescote.
Andy said: "In the infamous winter of 1947 when we had very heavy snowfall, Dad even recalled walking to work over the top of buses that were snowed into the deep drifts.”
In the mid-1950s Mr Richmond moved his family to West Yorkshire for four years where he worked as a conveyancing clerk at a firm of solicitors.
But in 1958 they returned to Wollescote after Baggeridge asked him to move back to work for them. He continued working for Baggeridge until he was 70.
Having left the Exclusive Brethren, in 1961 Mr Richmond became one of the pioneering elders of Chawn Hill Church in Stourbridge and in 1964 the family moved to Oldswinford.
In 1994 his wife Freda died following a car accident.
"It was a tough time," said Andy. "They had been married for 55 years and Dad was a devoted and loving husband."
After this, however, Mr Richmond discovered a new independence and lived on his own for a futher ten years before moving to live with his son Andy and daughter-in-law Joan, spending his last few years at their home in Ashton-under-Hill, near Evesham.