DEATHS & OBITUARIES

Peter Frederick Armstrong (1943-1948) 1929-2020

Sadly the OS Club has been informed that Peter Armstrong (43-48) passed away recently in Canada, aged 90.

David Horsley (S 1939-1943) 1925-2020

The OS Club has received the sad news that David Horsley (S 39-43) passed away on 8th March at the age of 94.

Peter David Hymas (W 1946-1950) 1933-2018

The OS Club is sad to announce the passing of Peter Hymas (W 46-50), who died in November 2018, aged 85.

Anthony Peter Thomas Higham (E 1954-1958) 1940-2020

We are sad to share the news that Tony Higham (E 54-58) passed away on 5th January at the age of 79.

John Basil Crossley (L 1963-1968) 1949-2019

Sadly the OS Club has been informed that John Crossley (L 63-68) passed away on 14th July 2019 at the age of 69.

Peter Kidson Poskitt (H 1945-1950) 1931-2019

The OS Club has received the sad news that Peter Poskitt (H 45-50) passed away last year at the age of 87.

John Perran Curry (S 1942-1945) 1928-2020

The OS Club is sad to announce the passing of John Curry (S 42-45), who died in March this year aged 91. John left Sedbergh shortly after the end of WW2. His father had chosen Sedbergh for John and his older brother, Henry Michael Curry (S 40-44), to get them away from the dangers of the bombing in the south. Some years ago John and his wife enjoyed a visit to look around the Sedbergh area. John reminisced then at the war memorial about a talented master who had joined the air force and been killed on his first sortie. He fondly remembered tobogganing down to the river and the 10 mile runs.

Michael Sanger-Davies (S 1950-1954) 1936-2020

We are sad to share the news that Michael Sanger-Davies (S 50-54) passed away on 24th February at age 83.

Peter J Attenborough (Former Headmaster 1975-1981) 1938-2020

The OS Club has received the sad news that Former Headmaster (1975-1981) and Honorary OS, Peter J Attenborough, passed away on 19th February after a short illness.

P.J. Attenborough was born in 1938 and was educated at Christ’s Hospital, where he represented the school in the 1st XV and 1st XI, and became Senior Grecian and Captain of the CCF. In 1956 he gained a State Scholarship and an Open Classical Exhibition to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he gained a First Class in the Classical Tripos. He went on to teach Classics at Uppingham, becoming a housemaster in 1970. He spent a year in Kenya on voluntary service, where he met his future wife Alexandra Page. They had two children: James and Charlotte.

An Uppingham colleague in The Sedberghian of 1975 described Attenborough as ‘king, unsparing of his time and efforts in helping Colleagues, boys, or anyone who needs sympathy or assistance. He is possessed to a high degree of the virtue of diplomacy, which is not to say that he is not a man of strong opinions and strong feelings about what he considers to be right or wrong or educationally desirable or undesirable. 
Attenborough was quick to listen to ideas, and quick to get involved. He was seen on the rugby pitch and at Choral Society, promoted the appreciation of music, art and drama in the school, he promoted necessary improvements of the Chapel’s facilities with great enthusiasm, oversaw the gift of the Makin organ in the School Chapel, and set up the Danson Room, promoted a Sixth Form career interviewing course.

During Attenborough’s time at Sedbergh, the lecture theatre was completed, solar panels were added to the swimming pool roof, the Barr tennis courts were opened, and extensive work was carried out on Cressbrook. 

In 1981, Attenborough and his family moved to Charterhouse.

The family have requested no flowers but if you would like to make a donation, Peter’s chosen charity is Christ’s Hospital Horsham, where he went to school. For any further information please contact Ledbury Funeral Services on 01531 633 388.

Please click here for an obituary.

Commander David Stuart White 1936-2020 (L 50-54)

Sadly the OS Club has been informed that David White (L 50-54) passed away in January this year at the age of 83.

Eric Aldie Neilson Mercer 1926-2019 (W 40-43)

We are sad to share the news that Eric Aldie Neilson Mercer (W 40-43) passed away peacefully in New Zealand on 17th October 2019 at age 93. He attended Sedbergh during the early part of WWII.

Robert John Tweedale 1927-2019 (SH 41-45)

The OS Club has received the sad news that Robert John Tweedale (SH 41-45) passed away on 22nd December 2019, aged 92.

Lionel Victor Walsh 1930-2019 (SH 44-47)

The OS Club is sad to announce the passing of Lionel Victor Walsh (SH 44-47), who died on 10th October 2019 aged 89. Please see below an obituary from The Baron.

Lionel Walsh, one of the most distinguished foreign correspondents of his generation, died on Tuesday in his native Yorkshire aged 89.

He joined Reuters in 1956 and stayed until 1972 when he moved to the BBC, but returned to Reuters for a second stint until 1981. In the early 1970s he was the first economic affairs editor for Reuters general news service.

President John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in Berlin and the Israeli trial of Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann were among the stories he covered. After a career that had taken him from London to Bonn, Geneva, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Warsaw, he joined the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris to build a new press and public relations department as director of public information.

In 1983 he was appointed head of the press department of the Paris-based International Energy Agency. The young Walsh, ex-national serviceman, amateur boxer and artist, began his career in journalism as a walk-in recruit at the Harrogate Advertiser, deciding on the spot not to join his father’s photographic business.

It was not the first time a newspaper played a significant role in his life. In his online memoirs, Lionel Walsh: My Life and Times, Walsh described how at the age of two he won a nationwide competition organised by the Sunday Dispatch to find “The Bonniest Baby in Britain”, thanks to a photograph sent in by his father. The prize money helped his parents send him to Sedbergh public school.

“My first and perhaps greatest triumph!” he wrote.

Half-paralysed by a stroke in 2004, Walsh was wheelchair-bound.

He retired first to central France and in 2009 moved back to Sheffield to be nearer his son and daughter, Terry and Theresa. Click here for the original notice.

David Brook Sutcliffe 1934-2019 (W 48-53)

We are sad to share the news that David Brook Sutcliffe (W 48-53) died on 11th November 2019, aged 84, after a short illness. Please see below an obituary from The Times.

David Sutcliffe – Liberal Founder of three United World Colleges, one in Wales, one in Italy and one in war-torn Bosnia

In the middle of Mostar, on the boundary between the Serb and the Bosniak districts, was the ruin of a school. Before the Bosnian war, the Mostar Gymnasium had been one of the finest schools in the country. Now the war was over, its reconstruction, like that of the city’s old bridge, had become a symbol of the tentative reconciliation between the county’s feuding tribes.

David Sutcliffe saw an opportunity in this ruin. He had been the headmaster of two United World Colleges (UWC), institutions that instilled a liberal, internationalist and peaceful ethos in their students, and encouraged them to engage in community service. Now he and his colleagues were looking for the site of a third.

UWC Mostar opened in the restored gymnasium in 2006. It was at that time the only school in the country where Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats shared a classroom. Sutcliffe would often select students on the basis not purely of their ability, but also of their lucklessness in life. The school’s financial situation was precarious – every year the staff convened to discuss whether they should accept another group of students.

Managing the logistics of the school in this tense and disordered environment required a dedicated network of supporters. Sutcliffe steadily built up this network to include Kofi Annan, the one-time secretary general of the United Nations. “It is very difficult to succeed here,” Sutcliffe liked to recall a Bosnian politician telling him, “but if you do it is a great victory.”

David Sutcliffe was born in 1934 in London, to Dr Richard and Eileen Sutcliffe. The family had ties to Guernsey, the German occupation of which gave him an early impression of the disruption that war brings. Aged 12, he would cycle around the island with an air rifle strapped to his back; that is, if he was not canoeing on the open sea or climbing the cliffs to reach birds’ nests.

Sutcliffe was educated at Sedbergh, a boarding school in Cumbria, and then St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read French and German. After graduating, he taught for four years at Salem, a school in Germany set up by the educator Kurt Hahn. Hahn’s vision of a holistic curriculum would shape Sutcliffe’s teaching career. At Salem he met his wife, Elizabeth, a fellow teacher there. They married in 1961 and had three children: Michael, who became an executive in the oil and gas industry; Veronica, a GP; and Edward, who worked in the Metropolitan Police and died of a brain tumour in 1993.

Sutcliffe then spent a year at Gordonstoun, the school in Scotland also set up by Hahn and best known for educating Prince Philip and Prince Charles, before assisting Hahn in the founding of Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan, the first of the UWCs. The school is housed in a 12th-century castle. He taught German there and led its first canoe lifeguard unit. The school also an an inshore lifeboat station, which he later managed. Under his direction the students set about trying to improve the rubber boats they used, testing prototypes to destruction. In this way, they designed the first rigid inflatable buoyancy craft, or “Rib”.

The headmaster, Desmond Hoare, sold the patent for the Rib to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution for £1, a decision that struck in Sutcliffe’s craw: “We lost an opportunity of funding the college. It would not have occured to Desmond to get a commercial advantage out of it.”

Becoming headmaster of the school in 1969, Sutcliffe set up a summer school for inner-city students and an arts centre for the local community, and vigorously supported the introduction of the International Baccalaureate (IB). In 1976 he convinced the heads of other schools that taught the IB to donate money to prevent the collapse of the qualification. Sutcliffe could be a severe figure of authority when he needed to be. If he was displeased with a member of staff, he would leave a note in their pigeonhole, the deeper his ire, the smaller the piece of paper. Yet he was also magnanimous. Students he had hardly spoken to were often surprised by how much he knew about them. He abided by Hahn’s maxim that, between teachers and students, “respect is not enough, affection is not necessary, what is wanted is trust.”

In 1982 he left his post at Atlantic College to set up UWC Adriatic, a school in Duino, northern Italy, near Trieste. Like the school he would later set up in Mostar, UWC Adriatic was, in its early days, a rickety enterprise – for the first year the students lived and took their lessons in a nearby hotel because the school building was not ready. At a UWC conference in Prague in 2000 Sutcliffe said that “it must become our joint task to take international education not to where it can be afforded, but to where it is urgently needed.”

As his venture in Bosnia shows, Sutcliffe was a man with an appetite for adversity. An avid sailor, in 1976 he had taken a sabbatical to compete in the Observer Single Handed Trans-Atlantic race, in a boat smaller than those of most of the challengers. Ferocious weather beset the race – two people died and 47 of the 125 yachts had to retire or be rescued. Yet among all the violent squalls, Sutcliffe found the time to read War and Peace as well as the entire works of Shakespeare.

David Sutcliffe, teacher, was born on November 26, 1934. He died of prostate cancer on November 11, 2019, aged 84.

Alan William Parkes 1960-2019 (S 74-77)

The OS Club is sad to announce the passing of Alan Parkes (S 74-77), who died in November 2019, in Taiwan, aged 58. Please see below an obituary written by his friend David Culley.

Words such as flamboyant and extrovert could be used to describe Alan Parkes (son of G.H.F.’Bobby’ Parkes) – sadly Alan passed away last week in Taiwan, a country he’d lived in for some 10 years. Alan was born on December 21st 1960, into what could be described as an automotive family. Father Bobby was a director of Small & Parkes, manufacturers of brake and clutch materials – their company subsequently bought by Cape Industries (BBA Mintex). Automotive notables such as Sir William Lyons and Jaguar E-Types were among family friends.

Alan attended Sedbergh School from 1974 until 1977, boarding in Sedgwick House. In 1977 Alan was a member of the house rugby (juniors) team and he also won the coveted Formby Cup at Altcar (a training camp for cadets) for the highest individual score in shooting. He was born to a French mother and has a sister, Julia.

Alan set the chins wagging a couple of times at Morecambe Car Club events when he entered a ‘quarry bash’ in a Metro 6R4, and then an autotest at Halton Camp when his chosen vehicle was a Ferrari! He once upset his father when Alan’s car (registration NUK 1 E) appeared, emblazoned on the Sun newspapers ‘Page 3’ – a partially clothed young lady adorning the bonnet. Alan eventually sold the registration to entertainer Roger DeCourcey. Alan was actively involved with Subaru USA and their Motorsport activities prior to moving to Taiwan where he was heavily involved in race circuit design and Motorsport out there. Alan Parkes, R.I.P.

George Marshall Fish, OBE, JP, DL, FCIOB 1928-2018 (SH 42-46)

We are sad to share the news that George Marshall Fish, OBE (SH 42-46), died on 7th November 2018, aged 90. Please see below an obituary courtesy of John Harlow (H 47-51).

George Marshall Fish was born in Nottingham and went to the Dolphin School in the city and after it was evacuated to Winkburn Hall. He attended Sedbergh School in 1941, entering School House, where he found great success in both high jump (winning in the Junior High Jump in 1943) and cricket, where he was a member of the 2nd XI in 1945 and the 1st XI in his final year in 1946. He loved the fells and became very skilled in water colours and pen and ink drawing. He did his National Service with the Royal Artillery and served in the South Notts Hussars afterwards.

His father had died in Sept 1939 when he was at the Dolphin School but his mother had carried on the business founded in 1840 of Thos Fish & Sons, a very well respected, high quality builders and joinery company. He was extremely well liked by all his workforce. In February 1952 he married his first wife, Jo Lowater.

George had construction and design in his blood and he was always thinking around problems and drawing sketches of a solution. [He built my house in 1968 and his help and advice was vital]. If you ever had a building project in mind George would offer his ideas, which from his perspective were always the right ones. According to his family he could be quite dogmatic and was not easily argued with. William, his eldest son, and Charles, the youngest, joined him in the business, while James the middle son became a Quantity Surveyor with Gleeds.

The business grew and prospered building quality houses, and working for local architects on major buildings. The business was taking on larger projects locally and in the Midlands under his two sons, after he stepped back from control. In 1969 he became a Justice of the Peace for the City of Nottingham and was made the Chairman of the County Magistrates Court Committee in 1984. The city needed a large new Court Complex but the local Councils were not keen to find the money. After two years, a study visit went to the USA to gain ideas for the new court and bridewell. George had his own ideas on design and full-size models were built with help and input from all the agencies to alter the Home Office standard designs and improve the layout for the benefit of both the JP’s but also lawyers, prisoners and the public. He visited well over ten other cities to look at their new courts. He also told the architects how, if they altered their design, it would be easier or cheaper to build. The money he saved was used for superior materials and today they still have years of further life.

The new courts were opened by the Lord Chancellor in 1993. A Royal Visit from HM the Queen followed and his enormous voluntary effort was rewarded with the OBE. He helped with the design and build of new courts at Mansfield and work at other courts in the County. He was Chairman of the Nottingham bench from 1994-96 and made a deputy to the Lord Lieutenant. George lived at the Manor House in Bulcote for 40 years, an avid cricketer with a cricket square in the grounds for the village team. His first wife, Jo, died, and he married an old school friend of hers in 2011, Jean Roberts. He is survived by his three sons and their children and grandchildren.

DEATHS

* Names in gold indicate an obituary link.