It is with deep sadness that we record that Andrew Berriman, a long-serving officer of Chichester Local History Society, died on Monday. 31 July after a three-year battle with cancer.
Andrew Berriman moved to Chichester in 1982 to take up the post of Head of Sixth Form at Chichester High School for Boys, (CHSB) a post which he held until retirement in 2009. At the school he had taken on the unofficial role of School Archivist and, as no-one else seemed to be interested in the history of CHSB, he saw to it that, before he retired, important documents and photographs would be deposited at West Sussex Record Office rather than ending up in a skip
Outside school he took a very keen interest in the history of his adopted city, and early on joined Chichester Local History Society, giving his first talk there in 1986. He became a regular contributor to the Society’s journal Chichester History which he edited between 1988 and 1990 and again from 2010 to 2014. For his final edited issue all the articles were written by authors who had a CHSB connection! He was Society Chairman from 1997 to 2003 and had been its secretary since 2011.Of recent years he has been writing an historical feature for Sussex Local – a monthly freebie magazine – as well as contributing to Lavant News. He had established the link with Lavant through having played cricket for them, and his daughter having been married there in St Mary’s church.
He self-published his first book, appropriately titled In search of Lavant, in 2020 followed by In Search of Fifty South Downs Villages in 2021 and In Search of Chichester in 2022. Few would have suspected that he had produced these books whilst fighting the cancer he had been told was terminal, but he went about their production and marketing himself with great zeal. He was working on his next opus, Forty Coastal Villages, when death finally overtook him.
He also took an active role in the life of the city, and other organisations with which he became involved after retirement were the Friends of Brandy Hole Copse, where he led work parties, Heartsmart ,for whom he conducted weekly country walks, the Walls Walk Trust and, if that were not enough, he was also a City Green Badge Guide. When not engaged in these activities he could be found on the golf course, on the tennis court or looking after his grandchildren with his wife Mari.
He remained very active almost to the last and just five weeks before his death he had been walking in the north east and playing tennis as normal. The end when it came was to be very rapid.
In accordance with his wishes he had a direct cremation which is to be followed, at a date and place to be advised, by a memorial service.
His passing has left a big hole in the very fabric of Chichester Local History Society as well as the other organisations to which he belonged.
A full tribute will appear in the 2024 edition of Chichester History