16 Facts About Fred Hando

Frederick James Hando MBE was a Welsh writer, artist and schoolteacher from Newport.

Fred Hando chronicled the history, character and folklore of Monmouthshire, which he called Gwent, in a series of nearly 800 newspaper articles and several books published between the 1920s and 1960s.

Fred Hando trained at Borough Road College, London, before returning to Newport as a teacher.

Fred Hando served as a gunnery officer with the Royal Engineers in the First World War, where his experiences in Flanders had a profound effect on him.

Fred Hando unlocked our prison and set free what talents that I am sure would have remained locked in us for ever.

Fred Hando proved to us that all things were possible.

Fred Hando adopted an open and progressive teaching style and was described by Miriam Andrews, a former teacher at the school, as "a wonderful headmaster and he made the children very proud of Hatherleigh".

Fred Hando said that he wanted to add to what was already on the map and that by studying leys he could reach back in history far beyond Roman Britain.

Fred Hando died on 17 February 1970, at St Joseph's Nursing Home in Newport, at the age of 81.

Fred Hando's scope was broader than buildings; in his foreword to the 1964 volume, Here and There in Monmouthshire, Edwin Morris, the then Archbishop of Wales, describes Hando's canvas as "reminiscence, folklore, local history, place names and introductions to interesting people, past and present, illustrated by his own beautiful drawings".

Fred Hando wrote of, and drank and smoked in, a large number of the country's hostelries, the Robin Hood Inn, Monmouth being a particular favourite.

Fred Hando's detailed chronicling of the county's history was referenced in the debate on the construction of an extension of the M4 motorway across the Gwent Levels; and the late Paul Flynn, former member of parliament for Newport West, recalled the "halcyon days" of Hando's columns in a discussion about declining journalistic standards at the South Wales Argus.

Fred Hando graduated from St Anne's College, Oxford, and later married Charles Smith, later Delacourt-Smith, in 1939.

Fred Hando's husband became a Labour MP in 1945 and later a Government minister, and was ennobled in 1967.

Fred Hando was a councillor and Justice of the Peace in Windsor in the 1960s.

Fred Hando remarried in 1978 and died in 2010 at the age of 94.