David Pritchard

I met David the very first day he joined the School.  Our parents already knew each other somehow and lived close to each other in South Croydon.  I had been at the School for a year and was sternly instructed to make sure David eased in comfortably.  From that moment we travelled up to School for the next 7 years together on the same train and remained friends for the rest of his life.

David was very studious and a gifted mathematician.  He graduated in engineering from Manchester University and then joined Rendel Palmer & Tritton, an extremely prominent firm of Consulting Engineers, where he qualified as a Chartered Civil Engineer and remained for much  of his working life.  He worked on numerous high end projects for RPT in UK and overseas, perhaps the best known being the Thames Barrier.  He worked to exacting standards and never compromised on the safety requirements of the projects he worked on, sometimes to the irritation of colleagues.

At School he had been a very keen member of the Model Railway Club.  Railways and steam engines in particular were his leisure passions.  He built model railway circuits in his home and in his back garden.  He built model engines from scratch.  He travelled on railways in remote parts of the world and one evening proudly showed me several hundred photos of steam engines on sugar plantations in Cuba. When he unexpectedly benefitted from the estate of his uncle he put money into restoring a railway line in North Devon, bought a flat in nearby Lynton and made a condition of his support that he be allowed to drive the steam engine using the restored track.

He was diagnosed with  cancer  3 years ago and coped with this in his customary stoic way, almost certainly aided by his strong religious beliefs but was finally “de-railed” on Christmas Eve 2025.

Keith Baker (1953-1961), JCC President 2015