Long standing Surrey Heritage volunteer retires

Lewis Orchard hangs up his pencil!

Many of you may have come across Lewis Orchard, one of our long-standing Surrey Heritage volunteers, whilst he's been beavering away in the searchroom cataloguing material relating to composer, suffragette and author, Dame Ethel Smyth. Although a retired chartered engineer by profession, Lewis first came to our attention in 2001 as a driving force behind Woking Concert Society and devotee of Dame Ethel. As a result of this he helped us stage a very successful exhibition 'An Extraordinary Life: Ethel Smyth' in 2002. The Ethel Smyth ripple effect thus began and what happened afterwards was a slow but steady reawakening of interest and appreciation into the life and music of this remarkable and irrepressible woman, who styled herself 'The Duchess of Woking'.

Years of research placed with Surrey History Centre

At one time there were only a handful of Google 'hits' for her but now there are hundreds, including our own Exploring Surrey's Past web page, which features a whole host of biographical information pages researched and written by Lewis over the years, some of which you will not find elsewhere, including a full bibliography, summaries of her published works, extracts from her memoirs, notes on her family history, friends and acquaintances, and a timeline. Lewis placed his own Ethel Smyth research collection with us and then helpfully catalogued it of course! (Surrey History Centre reference 9180).

Lockdown might have stopped many in their tracks but not Lewis, and from home he began cataloguing digital copies of Smyth letters and her unpublished memoir from the University of Michigan, which we had been given copies of (Surrey History Centre reference Z/711). He also advised Woking Borough Council with the creation of the Dame Ethel statue in Duke's Court, Woking town centre, unveiled in March 2022, giving a permanent presence in the town where she lived and died.

Lewis's final project with us has seen the enhanced cataloguing of concert programmes relating to local musician and conductor Claud Powell, the Guildford Symphony Orchestra and the County School of Music, Guildford. These include Ethel Smyth performances from the 1930s (Surrey History Reference 1756) and Lewis' extensive knowledge of classical music and Dame Ethel's works means that a huge amount of detail will now be readily accessible.

Farewell and thank you

It is safe to say that in our opinion there is no one alive who knows quite as much about Dame Ethel's life and local connections than Lewis, and we are truly grateful to him for the time he has devoted over the last 20 years to making our collections fuller and more visible. Thursday afternoons will not be quite the same. We will miss Lewis' energy and cheerful demeanour but appreciate that retirement at a sprightly 94 is well-deserved, although we still have him on speed-dial for any tricky Dame Ethel enquiries.