Owen Pell

Age

twenty-nine

Role

Town Crier; part-time local historian

Took the post

2024

Where to find him

the Reading Room, or walking the boundary

Owen Pell is enthusiastic, talkative, occasionally clumsy, and writes pamphlets at the back of the Reading Room. He is the youngest Town Crier Morrowfen has appointed since the post was created in 1951, and the first to publish a careful letter to the Gazette about a 1662 inventory.

On the parish

Owen grew up in Aingersby and read history at a university he is not, on the whole, keen to discuss. He moved to Morrowfen in 2022 and took the Town Crier’s post in 2024. He walks the parish boundary each quarter, in accordance with the 1951 tradition, and is allowed a free half pint at the Bell & Sluice on completion.

On local history

He has published, to date, three pamphlets: a history of the Halt, a list of the parish reeves since 1822, and a careful account of the bells of St. Within’s. He is preparing a fourth, on the Drainage Committee, which Della Finch has, he says, “not discouraged”.

Owen’s letter to the Gazette on the 1662 inventory is reproduced in the mysteries section.