Mayor of Fareham - 2008/2009

Councillor Ernest Crouch

Born in 1927 in the parish of St Pancras, London, Ernest Crouch was the second of six children of a shop owner at Aldersgate. He and his elder brother were choirboys at The Martyr’s Memorial Church, Smithfield, and often augmented the choir at St. Paul’s Cathedral in the nineteen thirties.

He won a scholarship to Dame Alice Owen’s school at the Angel, Islington, where he was educated between 1938 and 1942, although the school was evacuated to Bedford for the war years.  The younger children had been evacuated to Land’s End, but Ernest and his brother were at home for Christmas in 1940 when the shop and home were destroyed, with most of the city, in the incendiary blitz that December.   

He joined the Royal Navy in 1943 and served at sea in the North West approaches from 1944 until VE Day, a Signal Boy in HMS Hawkins.  Drafted immediately after the end of the war in Europe to the Pacific, his ship arrived in time to take over Singapore from the Japanese. After a spell patrolling the Persian Gulf and East Indian waters, he met Enid in Ceylon in 1947, where Enid was a nurse in the Royal Navy Hospital, Trincomalee.  They married in Ceylon in April 1948 and have just celebrated their Diamond anniversary.

Specialising in the tactical manoeuvring of screening ships, he served in destroyers and frigates for many years, including a very long commission in HMS Concord for the Korean war. His final years were in HMS “Devonshire”, until the end of his service in 1967, a Chief Yeoman of Signals, TCI.   

Awarded a Diploma in Works Management (MIWM) he began his twenty four years in industrial management at Drings in Portsmouth then Bowater Packaging. Then, for eighteen years before retiring, the Works Manager of Turnright Controls. 

His Borough Council career began in 1979 when he was elected to Portchester West ward.  Throughout the 1980’s he chaired the Housing Committee and in 1990, on retiring from industry, he was elected Mayor of Fareham, with Enid as his Mayoress. 

In 1994 he became Leader of the Council and has served on many committees and “outside” bodies in the community across the years.  In 2007 he was once again elected as Deputy Mayor and is now Mayor of Fareham for the municipal year 2008/2009.

Ernest and Enid have two children, six grandchildren and three great grandchildren.