Person:Anthony Berry (4)

In a letter of 26 November, 2001, A.A. Berry wrote to Cecil Berry Bosher

'I did not join Berry Bros until 1939, when I worked there for a few weeks before going off for my 6 years service in the Navy but I remember the Coronation in May 1937, although I was working in the City at that time and did not watch the procession from 3 St. James's Street. The senior partners of B.B. & Co. at that time were Hugh Rudd and Charles Walter Berry who lived at the Mill House, Calcot. The photograph you enclosed was taken in the garden of that house and C.W.B. entertained a great many people there. Your friend obviously went there as a girl and as her parents knew C.W.B. they were able to watch the Coronation procession either from 3 St. James's Street or from the next door house. I don't remember a gunsmith's office there and I am afraid that the names William Corey and Stephen Price don't ring a bell.

My father Francis and Charles Walter Berry were second cousins and were the grandsons of the original Berry Brothers, who were in control of Number Three for most of the 19th century. Your grandfather, Cecil Berry, was of course similarly related and was also a second cousin of C.W.B. I hope therefore that all this will be of some interest to you and to the woman you met, if you are still in touch with her. We have seen Sylvia and Dick three times during this last year - we lunched with them in Windsor and they came to lunch with us here in Bath the other day. They also come to a special family lunch in the cellars of Number Three to celebrate my nephew Michael Green's 70th birthday. It is a splendid wedding photograph of your father and mother and I will congratulate them on their Diamond Wedding when I send them a Christmas Card.

With love and every good wish. Tony

Tony was chairman of Berry Bros. 1965-1985

If anyone has a Berry story in their heads, they tell me. The last person was Rowena Holt Pomeroy. She was a WREN, 3rd Officer Plotter, in Gibraltar from Christmas 1943 until after VE Day. When she heard I was a Berry, she said, oh, I knew a Tony Berry at Gibraltar about 1944/45. He was ADC to Admiral Burroughs. Tony was in Signals, and pointed to the insignia on his sleeve in this photograph from Aunty Sylvia's collection and we had a nickname for him, what was it? The Glorious Anthony or something. Oh, but he was quite aloof and never known to go out with a Wren. I seem to remember him covered with gold braid. Signals officers wore satin ties. She was in Admiral Burroughs' ship when he was sent to the Azores to visit Admiral Holt since Adm. Holt was her father. Then she said, Is Tony well, did he marry, have children? I said yes and his wife is Sonia Graham-Hodgson which sent her into another flurry of reminiscences.

Her husband Pomeroy's sister's husband, that is, her brother-in-law, was Bunny Hodgson and a Master Vintner in the 1980s. His son is Nicko Hodgson and his daughter is Rose, now De Sales la Terrier. Rose is married to Ian who is at Justerini & Brooks. She shrugged, do you think they are connected, know each other?

1. ↑ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/finance-obituaries/7442990/Anthony-Berry.html