The Collection of Medals to the Leicester Regiment and Yeomanry formed by the late Trevor Harris

Trevor Henry Harris

Trevor Harris was born at Great Glen, Leicestershire, on 7 July 1932. Educated at Kibworth Grammar School, he started his career with Messrs Hopps and Bankart, where he qualified as a chartered accountant at the early age of 21, and as a cost and works accountant whilst completing his National Service in the R.A.F.

After a spell with Hopps and Bankart, Trevor took a post in industry with Coates Viyella in Nottingham, where he became assistant to the then chairman, Joe Hyman. He was also a director of Cooper Bros, Nottingham, a Coates Viyella subsidiary. Following his marriage to Janet in 1959 and the births of their son and daughter, the Harrises moved back to Leicester and Trevor joined British Enkalon, holding various financial posts and eventually retiring as finance director.

In his younger days Trevor was a keen and active sportsman, playing football for the local Westleigh Football Club, rugby and cricket. At the age of 16 he cycled with friends to Italy and Spain and thought nothing of cycling to the Lincolnshire coast and back in a day. A loyal supporter of Leicester City Football Club, where he held a season ticket from his early teens right up to the time of his death on 5 June 2000, he was also passionately interested in the fortunes of the Leicester Tigers, the city's rugby side.

Trevor first started to get interested in medals in the late 1950s. Unsurprisingly, his principal collecting field was the Leicestershire Yeomanry and the Leicestershire Regiment. Over the next 40 years he amassed a very comprehensive run of awards, starting with those won by the 17th Foot in Nepal in the second decade of the 19th century and including the very rare Albert Medal trio to Private W.H. Foster, for endeavouring to rescue a comrade during a serious fire at Simla in June 1931. The collection was kept in a superb bespoke inlaid collectors' cabinet, commissioned by Trevor from Andrew Varah and executed in an Art Deco style; the cabinet is also in this sale. A well known figure at medal gatherings and the London salerooms, Trevor's advice on Leicestershire medals was often sought and willingly given; he was able to draw on his own large library of military references to assist in this respect.

A past chairman and staunch supporter of the the Leicester Round Table, Trevor's other interests included freemasonry and philately. A Worshipful Master of the Halford Lodge, he was also a founder member of the Rotary Lodge in Syston.