Sir Henry Blackall was born in Limerick, Ireland in 1889. He was a lawyer and a judge with a special interest in genealogy. In 1919, Sir Henry was appointed Crown Counsel in Kenya and a member of the Legislative Council in 1920. In 1923, he was appointed Crown Counsel in Nigeria until 1931. He then served as Attorney General in Cyprus from 1932 to 1936 and then in the Gold Coast from 1936 to 1943. While serving in Cyprus, he was invested as Queen's Counsel. In 1943 he was appointed Chief Justice of Trinidad and Tobago and President of the West Indian Court of Appeal. At the end of World War II, in 1946, he was appointed Chief Justice of Hong Kong.
He came to Cyprus in 1932 and in 1934 married the local Cypriot Maritsa Severis. Upon his arrival to Cyprus he visited Nicosia documenting his impressions in his diary: ‘Went for a walk around the city with Thomas. The cathedral built by the Crusades is now a mosque and being Ramadan we could not enter inside. Nicosia is a regular Eastern city. The different houses being together each of their own part of the bazaar. It is certainly incomparably more interesting than a place like Lagos…’ Sir Henry and Lady Blackall lived in Kyrenia at Adah Chiftlik and then at the Severis family house over the Kyrenia harbor until 1977.
Lady Blackall died on January 1st, 1981. Sir Henry’s diaries dating from 1929 – 1980 are kept at the library of CVAR. The photographs presented here were drawn from the personal album of Sir Henry Blackall dating c. 1930-1940 and the Severis archive that are part of CVAR’s collections. They depict Sir Henry in his formal attire, the couple on an official event and views of the Adah Chiftlik in Kyrenia. Sir Henry died in Nicosia on November 1st, 1981.
