Alan Hurd 1937-2016

It is with great sadness that we announce that Alan Hurd, former English teacher and cricket coach, died at the end of March. 

Born in 1937, Alan was a Cambridge Blue and played professional cricket for Essex between 1958 and 1960, taking 249 wickets in 90 first-class appearances, before being appointed to teach English at Sevenoaks School by Kim Taylor. He is remembered as an outstanding and popular teacher, who influenced many Old Sennockians, among them writers Neil Powell and Jonathan Bate. He coached cricket at the school for many years, training future Test players Chris Tavaré and Paul Downton, as well as county players such as Guy Spelman (Kent) and Will House (Kent, Sussex).

During his teaching career he played club cricket for Sevenoaks Vine and represented the Club Cricket Conference in tour matches against Australia in 1961 and Pakistan in 1962. Alan continued to be a great supporter of Sevenoaks Vine.

In Hurd’s Valete, John Guyatt wrote of how ‘his contribution to and influence upon cricket at Sevenoaks has been inestimable, producing in the 1970s one of the finest school teams in the country; and above all two test players’. John also wrote of his ‘complete mastery of language and style…[he could] in the same breath or paragraph [pass] from succinct erudition to a limerick’.

He retired as Head of English and Senior Master in January 1997.

The funeral will take place at Tunbridge Wells Cremation at 1:00pm on Monday 18 April. Old Sennockians are invited to the school afterwards, from 2.30pm in The Space. Parking is very restricted on site, so please park in our Solefields car park or in town. If you would like to attend, please click here to email us. If you would like to have a tour of the school, please do include this in your email so we can arrange it; we regret that visitors are not permitted to wander the campus unaccompanied.

Alan Hurd is remembered by former pupils on the Old Sennockians Facebook page.

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