Rugby Towns #4 Holt RFC

In the farming lands of north Norfolk, where Sirs Benjamin Britten and James Dyson went to school, in a town that was once burnt to cinders, a 91-year-old former boxer has found a home unlike any he’s ever known, at Holt RFC.

The Aberdeen Angus look pristine in the barn, almost glossy-coated, with heads poking out awaiting their next feed, looking as well-kept as the immaculate farm around them. It’s part of a 600-acre plot run by Richard Harrison, for the time being at least, as he prepares to hand the reins over to his son. Richard is one of the forefathers of Holt RFC, a rugby club in north Norfolk, where home is a town almost on the very edge of the coast, just south of Saltwater and the sand dunes and shingle of Blakeney. This small chunk of England is famed for its school, Gresham, its birdwatching, its iconic landscapes of windswept saltmarshes and even its windmill. 

The market town of Holt was burnt to the ground in the 1700s, when fire tore through the stalls and turned its wooden buildings and even its church into cinders. But what rose from the ashes was the pretty Georgian town that stands today, a place affluent enough to have a Jelly Cat shop and even its own ‘Harrods of Norfolk’, Bakers and Larners, purveyors of the finest produce. “I don’t know if Holt needed a rugby club,” says Richard, when we meet at his farm, a short drive outside of town. “We forced it upon them perhaps. All the local farmers were friendly, and we’d meet in the pub on Saturday and as we were playing rugby elsewhere, we decided we should have a rugby club closer to home.

“There had only been about three in Norfolk at that stage,” he continues, “so that was the springboard. North Walsham started around the same time.”

Richard has been farming his entire life, first with his father and brother – who also played rugby for the club – and for the last 45 years at his beloved Hall Farm. “Farming was different back then,” he adds, as we discuss how Holt’s first team of 1961 were at least half made up of farmers. “There were lots of farmers, and now farming life has been changed so there’s less farmers but much bigger farms.

“A local publican became a benefactor,” says Richard picking up on the history thread. “And he let us have our changing room in the garage out back and we built an elephant bath there. We’d run about a hundred yards up the road to play where a local farmer had a bit of grazing land for his cattle – we used that for a pitch.”

The farmhouse isn’t full of Holt RFC artefacts, but Richard does dig up a black and white photograph of the first-ever side. He picks the black and white picture up. “We’ve got John Ross, back row, the most controversial person in the club, he bored the pants off everybody,” he begins. “He did an awful lot of good for the club because he worked so hard, but he couldn’t play rugby very well.

“There’s old Bill Cubitt,” he says, pointing to another player. “In our early days, he lived locally, within a mile and a half of the rugby club, and it was before we’d built that bath, and we used to go back to his house. He had a bath in the middle of a large room and we’d take our turns to get ourselves washed up after the game. 

“He was frugal was Bill,” he adds, “but a good ol’ boy... And there’s a few Harrisons on here too, we’ve always had a lot of Harrisons within the club; in that team there was me and my brother and a third Harrison who made up the back row.”

Richard pauses to scan the print for more faces. “And there’s dear old John Williams, he was Mr Rugby for Holt, a dear, dear man who had played for Cambridge and we were proud of that in those days. But unfortunately, of this picture, there’s only five of us left.

“You always remember your good friends in the club and those you miss, many of these died a long time ago, but we still talk about them a lot and those that are left still meet up, not for rugby but for bowls.”

What does the club mean to Richard? “Everything really,” he answers, simply. “The best people I know come from Holt rugby club.”

Gresham’s is proud of its alumni, which includes everyone from Sir Benjamin Britten and Sir James Dyson, to Oscar winner Olivia Colman and poet WH Auden, and of course Ben and Tom Youngs. Holt RFC is equally, if not more proud, of the latter pairing, something evident with the huge mural of Ben that adorns one entire outside wall of the clubhouse. 

We’re met by former president Paul Williams, son of ‘Mr Rugby’ John, but also in Richard’s photograph, as one of the Holt ‘originals’.  “Lord Reith, founder of the BBC, went to Gresham’s,” he tells us, continuing on the thread. “The latest one [Sir] is of course Sir James Dyson. I asked him to be a member once, but sadly he declined.

“The headmaster when we founded, Logie Bruce-Lockhart, had played for Scotland and together with my father John, helped found the club. So, Gresham’s and Holt have been entwined ever since 1961.

“I was brought up here, I went to Gresham’s, so it [the town] has always been in my blood. The people around here are very friendly, once you get to know them. Sometimes we may be a little bit wary of outsiders, but we welcome all.”

Holt’s position at the north end of East Anglia, facing the North Sea, is a negative to some. “Well, a lot of outsiders who don’t know Norfolk say, ‘don’t go to Norfolk because it’s on the road to nowhere’,” explains Paul. “But I think that’s how a lot of people who live in Norfolk quite like it, because you don’t have a motorway coming through and disturbing everyone and we’re allowed to get on with our own lives in our own way.”

Their own way has led to creating a very successful grassroots rugby club. Today, the club are facing Bury St Edmunds seconds in the Eastern Counties 2 (tier seven), where they sit in second place, looking good for promotion. “We spent some time in the Eastern Counties 2 and this is our first season back, and we want to get to level six,” says Paul. But league position isn’t the only way to judge success. “I think we’re probably one of the only sides in Norfolk to regularly put out three senior sides and we’ve got a good mini section too, there’s about 400 players,” says Paul.

And it’s produced world-class players too. “We’ve had the Youngs, and Freddie Steward spent time as a mini here too,” says Paul. “But no, we’re a very small club, four miles from the coast, so we have to draw inland, and I think for a small market town like ours, we punch above our weight.”

Ben Youngs doesn’t just loom large on the club exterior wall, he’s also in a framed photo inside the clubhouse, along with a wall of memorabilia that includes mementos from father Nick and brother Tom as well.  

The family are still connected too, with father Nick, also a former player, visiting the occasional match, and Tom coaching his daughter’s age group within the minis. “Holt’s been put on the map a bit by Ben Youngs becoming England’s most capped player,” says Chris Harrison, the club president – and Richard’s nephew – when he arrives to chat. “We’re so proud that he started his rugby here as a mini running around these pitches. 

“I’m just so proud of this club,” he says. “Every day, I’m just so massively proud of this place. Honestly, I’m getting tongue tied just thinking about it.”

The club conjures up emotion among almost everyone we speak to, including another farmer and former chairman, Ben Jones, who pops his head in to say hello. “It’s a loyal place,” says Ben. “You know, it’s usually written in stone, if you’re brought up around here you play for Holt rugby club or least support it. 

“When I was chairman of the minis, I used to get parents ask me what Holt rugby club had to offer their child, and I used to always say, that they will never, never be without a friend. And that is very, very true. And we’ve still got friends from when we were playing and you make friends for life here.”

The kitchen at Holt RFC is a thing of beauty to behold, akin more to those found at a restaurant than your average grassroots club. And coming out of it, is plate after plate of sausage and mash, serving up the hundred or so mix of old boys and colts who’ve arrived for the lunch that precedes every league fixture. 

Among those doing the rounds is 91-year-old Ken Swallow. His route anywhere in the club takes by far the longest of any member, not because of his age, but due to all those wanting to give him a hug, a warm handshake or the promise of a beer later. “Well, how long have we got? I’ll say it quickly,” he promises as I ask about his back story. “So, my wife had seen this advertisement in the paper, the Sunday Post I think it was, and it was saying if you sold your house, then they would put you up in one of theirs – because they were selling them around this area.

“Anyway,” he continues, “after three weeks of the advert being on the kitchen table my wife said, ‘I might as well throw this away, as you’re not interested’. So, I sent off for the coupon and they put us up in a bed and breakfast down here because we’d never been to Norfolk or Suffolk. We got wined and dined in the Feathers pub in Holt, and we overheard some people talking about rugby, we got talking to them and they told us about what a marvellous rugby club they had here. Anyway, after two days down here, that was it, we moved. That was 27 years ago.”

At first Ken, who’d been a boxer in his younger days, had joined a boxing club, but late-night journeys on pitch-black country lanes, meant it quickly fell out of favour with wife Rita. “And then Holt rugby club took over everything in my life,” he says. “I don’t know what I’d do without Holt rugby. The wife, she loved it here. And I’ve shown you the royal box there...” He points to the compact ‘VIP’ area of the club – a small, wooden, seating area. “We always used to go and stand in there, and come to all the lunches and never looked back. 

“But unfortunately, the wife, she got Alzheimer’s three years ago,” he continues. “She wasn’t aware that she had Alzheimer’s, I kept it from her, and most of the people here at the rugby club didn’t know, but I managed it with her. 

“We used to go out a couple of times a week on the coast road and through all the villages and she used to say, ‘Oh, isn’t it beautiful Ken?’ I’d say, ‘yeah and if it hadn’t been for you we’d have been still home in Leeds, listening to all that noise from the Selby Road’.”

Ken’s story is a beautiful, but sad one. Up until last year, when the illness took its toll, the club had been a second home for Ken and Rita. “Rita had to go into a home and she was there for eight weeks, and she just went downhill rapidly. And so, I was very, very fortunate that it didn’t really grab her that much. She didn’t know that she had this Alzheimer’s disease. 

“But I knew, and it were hard going, but this club kept me going all the time,” he says. “There were only two chaps here that knew Rita was ill with the Alzheimer’s, even when we used to be in the royal box every week.

“She used to love it,” he repeats, emphasising Rita’s attachment to the club. “She’d look forward to coming and she used to like to come in on a Sunday morning too, watching all the children playing. There’s hundreds of children here on a Sunday morning and it’s absolutely wonderful.”

Despite being less than a decade shy of his century, Ken’s known for still taking part in some touch rugby. “I’m not done yet,” he says. “I’m going to get my boots on for touch rugby this spring.”

Ken’s stories meander in the best possible way, from anecdotes of losing his swimming shorts in front of a beach-full of people on the north coast – “A wave hit me bottom and me trunks fell to the sand, there’s people on the beach laughing away. I had to quickly pull them up and it was full of shingle” – to countless nights when he and Rita would kick-off nights of singing in front of the fire at the local pub. 

“This community looks after people,” he says of Holt. “It looks after older people like myself. You can go into the community centre from ten o’clock in the morning until one in the afternoon, and you can have tea, biscuits and a lump of cake, and it’s all free. Although there’s a bucket where you can put money in, and I always do.

“Then, on a Thursday,” he continues, “they have a two-course meal in the venue which is also free. But there’s a bucket. So, if people are feeling the pinch, they’ve got a free lunch and they can go during the week. And you can go and keep warm in the venue, and that’s why they have it open at ten in the morning.”

For Ken, this club fits into the warmth of the town that he clearly feels. Both young and old make a point of speaking to Ken, not just a cursory hello, but to stop for a proper chat – no doubt as hooked on his stories as we are. 

“Even the young lads are so friendly,” he says. “When they see me, they all say, ‘Aye up, Ken’,” he laughs. “They all call me ‘Aye up Ken’. Even when I’m in town or in a pub, if the lads are in with their friends or family, they’ll come and say, ‘Aye up’.  They’re good lads.

“And have you met Jeanette, the secretary and her husband Simon? They’re absolutely cracking.”

The illness and passing of Rita in recent weeks has made visits to the rugby club more infrequent; he tells us he couldn’t visit for a long time as he knew the first question he’d be asked, unknowingly by his rugby friends, was ‘how’s Rita?’, and, understandably, he wasn’t ready to handle it. 

“I do miss it,” he says of his recent absence. “But I’ve got people that ring me up from the rugby club, like Simon, and they’ll come and knock on the door and say, ‘aye up, Ken, are you up for a sausage sandwich? Or a full English?’. I’ll say, ‘I’m always ready’. And they take me for a run on the coast and go to different places and we grade the places, as to which is the best.”

And the best? “The best sausage sandwich in Holt,” he says, pausing for effect. “... is Horatio’s, and it’s spot-on.”

A life without the club isn’t something Ken can contemplate. “I wouldn’t be here,” he says, voice cracking ever-so-slightly and he takes a moment.

How big a part of his life is Holt rugby club? “Oh, it’s 99.9 per cent of it,” he responds. “I don’t know what I’d have done without this place. Because they put their arms around you here, even the young lads, and you’re part of this family and since Rita’s gone, you need somebody. 

“My lad lives here now, but I’ve been on my own here for 27 years with the wife and nobody else, but they do say that rugby is one big family and I endorse that 100 per cent. If I see any strangers come into the club I go and talk to them,” he says. “And that’s part of my job, to make people welcome as well.

“So, if people come here for the first time, I’ll make a beeline for them to say hello, because that’s what this club does, and I’ll never, ever forget how they welcomed me...”  

Story by Tyrone Bulger

Pictures by James McNaught

This Rugby Towns story was created in partnership with Canterbury.

This extract was taken from issue 21 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.