Norman Harold Chase and the pavilion

Norman Harold Chase served as Langleybury Cricket Club’s president from 1998 until his death in 2015. His obituary records a much longer connection as a supporter, beginning in the 1970s, and an earlier period as vice-president. It also records that the pavilion had been named in his honour. Watford Observer obituary, 7 July 2015.

Support before the presidency

Chase’s connection is a reminder that club history is not made solely by players. The obituary describes a patron whose involvement pre-dated his presidency by decades. The surviving evidence does not provide exact start and end dates for his vice-presidency, so those have not been supplied here.

The club’s Clubman of the Year table names Norman Chase in 1989 and 2011. Those two entries, separated by more than twenty years, are a second kind of record of his contribution. Clubman of the Year sheet.

President, 1998–2015

The reported 17-year presidency began in the year of Langleybury’s Hertfordshire league championship. That shared year is a chronological connection; it should not be turned into a claim that Chase caused a playing result or held a particular match-day role.

He died on 4 July 2015, aged 94. The obituary identifies him as a former Major, a Second World War pilot and a Distinguished Flying Cross recipient. These biographical details are reported by that source; this archive does not expand them into an unsupported account of individual wartime operations. The obituary.

The pavilion’s name

By the time of the obituary, the pavilion had been named after Chase. The naming date has not been recovered. It is therefore accurate to say the name was recorded by July 2015, but not to assign it to the start of his presidency or to the year of his death.

The pavilion history follows the buildings through other sources. Chase’s story adds the human context: a long-serving supporter remembered in a building central to the club’s life.