Herbert Stanley Allen, 1873-1954

Herbert Stanley Allen, Emeritus Professor of Natural Philosophy in the United College of St Salvator and St Leonard at St Andrews, died on 27 April 1954 at the Manse of Resolis, Balblair, in Ross-shire, where he had passed the last few months of his life with his daughter, Mrs Walker. He was born on 29 December 1873 at Bodmin in Cornwall and was the fifth son of the Rev. Richard Allen, who was Wesleyan minister there. He was very proud of his Cornish birth and that was no doubt the reason why his house in Hepburn Gardens, St Andrews, was named ‘Lamorna’. On his father’s side his ancestry can be traced back to a certain Willielmus de Birkebeck who, as one of the adherents of the Earl of Lancaster in the reign of Edward II, was pardoned by consent of Parliament in the year 1318. A descendant of his, Thomas Birkbeck, was Governor of Carlisle and it is recorded that arms were granted to him, in 1515, for his brave defence against the Scots. Somewhat later, in 1553, the estate of Hornby, in the Parish of Brougham in Westmorland, was granted by the Earl of Cumberland to Edward Birkbeck and remained in the possession of the family till 1695. Allen descended from the Birkbecks through his great grandfather, John Allen of Caton, Lancaster, who married a certain Jane Birkbeck.