Last updated 05:39, Friday, 08 August 2008

His influence on the health service in Cumbria was far reaching and the improvements Dr Charles Rolland brought about were real and lasting, especially in provision for the elderly and for those suffering from diabetes and other glandular disorders.

Dr Charles Rolland: When he arrived at the infirmary in 1956 there were only three physicians providing in-patient and out-patient care for people of all ages, in both the east and west of the county

When he arrived in the old county of Cumberland in 1956 to work as a consultant physician in Carlisle, care was sometimes minimal.

Paediatricians and elderly care consultants were simply not available and there were only three physicians providing in-patient and out-patient care for people of all ages, in both the east and west of the county.

And so he set out to improve things. He brought the tuberculosis hospitals such as the Blencathra Sanatorium into the new geriatric service and he ensured that all staff were properly trained.

He became the first doctor to be responsible for the intensive care unit at the Cumberland Infirmary and was the first to specialise in diabetes treatment and endocrinology there. Some 2,000 patients attended his diabetic clinic.

Many remembered his skill and professionalism, particularly at personally challenging times, during pregnancy and childbirth for example.

He also made his mark in the teaching of student doctors and nurses and served as an examiner for both the University of Newcastle and for the Royal College of Physicians, in Edinburgh.

He also featured prominently in hospital management. He was chairman of the medical staff committee, a member of the special area committee and of the project team for the Penrith New Hospital. It was testament to his work and his popularity that many of his former junior colleagues kept in touch.

A Lancashire lad, born in Bolton, he nevertheless always considered himself to be a Scot because it was north of the Border that he spent his formative years. He and his younger brother, Graham, were educated at the Loretto School, in Edinburgh, where he showed early promise both academically and as a sportsman and from there he won his way to Cambridge University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine first class honours degree.

He returned to Edinburgh for clinical medical training and qualified as doctor in 1944 but was then called up for wartime military service. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and, as a very fit man who had played rugby at Cambridge and been president of the university mountaineering club, he volunteered for service with the Royal Marine Commandos. At the same time a less adventurous friend of his also did some volunteering, for service in India but, as sometimes happened in the British army, administrative confusion reigned and the friend was sent to train as a reluctant commando while Dr Rolland went off to India.

This was not all, for RAMC Lieutenant Rolland was to be sent out there, not with a regiment that had any links with the sub-continent but with the Royal West African Frontier Force.

However, with typical determination to get on with life, he courted and married a nurse he had met while in Cambridge. She was Venetia Payne, from East Anglia, who was training at the famous Addenbrook’s Hospital. But their time together was very short – a fortnight after they married he was posted abroad, at the age of 25.

Although the war in Europe had ended while he was sailing to India, the conflict with Japan had not and it was on the voyage to the Far East that he used his ready sense of humour to persuade fellow soldiers that he possessed uncanny powers – by secretly extracting the sting from a scorpion and then holding the creature in his hand, without being stung.

He was promoted captain during his time in India and he did not see his wife until he returned to Britain two years later but they kept in close touch and their happy marriage flourished for the next 60 years.

While he was in India, his wife spent much of the time nursing at a hospital in Romford.

After demobilisation he returned to Edinburgh where he continued his post-graduate studies and was highly commended for his Doctor of Medicine thesis on diabetes.

He became a registrar at the city’s Royal Infirmary and a consultant physician in 1954, moving to Carlisle in 1956, when he became a consultant physician at the CIC.

In the years after World War Two there were many doctors who had been demobbed from the services and gone on to complete their training and they were all then looking for jobs. Some who would, in other circumstances, have been appointed to senior positions in teaching hospitals and universities chose a more hands-on approach in clinical practice in district hospitals. As a result, the Cumberland Infirmary attracted some exceptionally talented consultants such as Tommy Studdart, Bruce MacLean, Josephine Ewbank and Geoffrey Scott-Harden who then brought in others of equally high calibre and Charles Rolland was one of their leaders.

Away from his studies and his job, he showed great skill and determination as a rock climber, often in the Lake District, sometimes discovering new routes to the tops. As well as being president of the mountaineering club at Cambridge, he was a member of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club and once took part in the rescue of Lord Hunt, leader of the successful 1953 Everest climb, when the great man had fallen and broken his leg in Wales.

In the Lakes, he was the first person to climb Bilberry Buttress, which is now a well-established route on Raven Crag in Langdale.

He had an extraordinary memory and when his daughter, Fiona, completed the same climb 60 years later he asked her if she had found “the little hand hold up to the right, just above your head”.

He read widely – history, biography, anything factual – and he loved to discuss current affairs and to challenge opinion.

In recent times he read the Koran, because he felt it would help him to better understand the modern world.

He and his wife had kept all their many letters to each other, written during his time in India and in retirement he typed them all out – certain very personal passages omitted, of course – and the collection provided a fascinating insight into life during the later war years so long ago.

He also taught himself to make frames for the pictures his wife painted and less than two weeks ago he was admiring her work (and his) at the Lakes Artists’ public exhibition, in Grasmere.

He loved his gardens, at the Dovecote when they lived in Scotby and at Knocker House in Caldbeck, and they were much admired.

He was a keen fishermen and he and his family were very fond of the Isle of Barra, in the Hebrides, where they enjoyed many away-from-it-all holidays digging potatoes, fishing, boating. and watching wildlife.

As a young man, he had passed many hours with Millican Dalton, the so-called Professor of Adventure, who lived in a cave at Borrowdale.

Dr Charles Rolland was 87 when he died peacefully at his home in Caldbeck and he was cremated in Carlisle.

He leaves his wife, daughter, son and two grandchildren. His brother was killed in action aged 18 while serving with the war-time RAF.