Bernard Segrave-Daly – “a great love of the Lord”
I was born in Dublin in 1941, the fourth of four children. I have two sisters and a brother. I spent a happy childhood in County Kilkenny where we had a 90-acre farm. It was a traditional Irish upbringing – we prayed together at home round the fire at night, and then I was subjected to the stern teaching of the Redemptorists.
When I was seven my mother went to Sri Lanka to represent Ireland at the World Women’s Conference for the Irish equivalent of the WI, and I was farmed off to boarding school. It doesn’t appear to have done much damage!
From 11 to 16 I was at the Benedictine school at Glenstal Abbey in Co Limerick. I loved silence and prayer and when I was 18 I spent 20 months in the monastery, but in the end it wasn’t for me. My father, too, had been a monk at Downside before he married. I then went to University College Dublin for a year, and had a summer job fruit picking in Wenhaston, Suffolk, and a canning factory in North Walsham, so I came to know this part of the world. Then I went to London to do a degree in accountancy.
My grandfather had been a director of Adnams Brewery from 1902 till 1914 when he went into the Kilkenny Militia, and in 1964 they offered me a job. I loved the rural life here by the sea, and I played rugby for Southwold (and was vice-captain), and tennis.
I had met Oonagh, a distant relative, when I was 19. It wasn’t love at first sight! She was sophisticated, and well versed in the arts and literature and I was just a country boy. We met again three years later when she returned to England to do a teacher’s degree, and we married on 23 April 1966. So we have been happily married for 59 years. We have three sons.
I finished my degree at Adnams, and we lived at Brewery Cottage in Southwold, and later moved to Uggeshall where I started to make cider. We attended St Benet’s where Fr Francis Little was parish priest, as he was good with young people, and we also went to Mass at the UEA. I led a prayer group in Beccles.
I became managing director of Adnams within five years when I was 29; I was also company secretary and had charge of personnel; Adnams employed more than 300 people. Oonagh was a full-time mother, and later a dental nurse.
Our holidays were always spent in wild places, especially mountains. I care very much for flora and fauna – for the environment.
I became involved with the diocese in the time of Bishop Alan Clarke. I served a three-year term as chair of the Diocesan Pastoral Council, and represented the diocese at the National Catholic Congress in Liverpool in 1980 on the Evangelisation working group. I was also chair of the Social Concern Commission in our diocese for seven years.
in 1975 a few friends and I founded a housing trust for homeless people beside St Benet’s, which still survives today as the Lowestoft Night Shelter. We also acquired the old nurses’ home opposite the church gates as a hostel for “lonely people’, and this is now a Mencap house. And I am a trustee of a charity which has built 178 houses in eastern Europe for homeless families, and this has been run by my sister. I was also a director of Victim Support Suffolk.
I spent 12 years on the parole board at Blundeston Prison, and have worked in the Tax Court as a judge/Commissioner of Taxes. I still retain my Irish passport, so could not become a JP. There was a possibility of the House of Lords, but they turned me down…but I was happy to walk away from that.
Although of course we live in a parish, we have our private life of prayer, and that is what engages us in spiritual growth and in deepening our faith. I say the prayer of the Church morning and evening, and I go to daily Mass and have done all my life. it is part of who I am and my attitude.
We moved into Beccles a few years ago where we rent a house, having sold our house and given the money to our sons. I’ve set up a charitable fund to enable giving to CAFOD, Aid to the Church in Need, and sport for the young. I always vote: it is my duty as a citizen. Having been personnel director for 320 employees how to handle people is a major issue of my life.
Nowadays we walk, and I have an allotment to keep me busy and fit.
You can sum it all up in “I have a great love of the Lord and a passion for Irish rugby!”
