Antony Pooley known as Tony, died peacefully in the Cambridge Care Home on Thursday, 26 October 2023.

Tony was born on 12 April 1927, in one of the cottages on the Terrace, since demolished. He was the son of Cecilia, née Jennings, and Arthur, and was the younger brother of Derek. Cecelia’s forebears, the Jennings family, had for several generations lived at 93 High Street, which had formerly been the William IV pub, serving beer through the window to agricultural labourers as they returned from the fields at the end of the working day. Cecelia, Arthur, Derek and Tony moved in when the pub had become a private house, and number 93 remained Tony’s home for the best part of a century. Arthur ran a small sawmill from a barn in the garden and Cecilia kept the village supplied with eggs; she bought an extra piece of paddock land at the back of no.93 from the people who lived in what is now Low Brooms, and was a very strong and self-sufficient woman.

Tony had happy memories of Little Shelford in the 1930s. He especially enjoyed being allowed to help get the harvest in with the ‘big boys’: his brother Derek, and also Doug Walker and Jack Fordham who were close neighbours. Tony went to the local primary school, where he remembered the headmistress at the piano, scowling at him because they were performing ‘Widdecombe Fair’ for parents and Tony never came in at the right moment in his role as ‘Harry Hawk’. Tony also remembered the local doctor, who lived in Great Shelford. No appointments were necessary, but the doctor could not be summoned on Thursday evenings unless it was a matter of life and death, because it was his bridge night. Tony went on to Sawston Village College in its early days, on his bicycle, coming home for lunch. He was never much of a scholar, and was always someone who preferred his own company rather than being in social groups, but he was keen on mechanics, enjoying taking engines apart and fixing things.

Tragedy struck the family at the end of the war, when Derek was badly wounded, serving in the Irish Guards He came home, as an invalid, but died at the age of 22. Tony was just too young to fight in the war, but once he was old enough, he trained as a pilot, gaining his licence in 1951. Aviation became his passion throughout his working life. He moved to Canada, where he settled in Saint John in New Brunswick and worked as both a commercial pilot and a private pilot for the big Canadian industrialist K C Irving. This took him on many long-distance trips, delivering and fetching planes, to Barbados, Mexico and Egypt. Tony also loved boats and had several, living on one of them for nine years, all year round. After his father died in the 1950s, for many years Tony spent the winter months in Little Shelford with his mother until she died, escaping the harshness of Canadian temperatures and snowfalls. Doug Walker helped to keep number 93 secure and patched it up as best he could in Tony’s summer absence, although Tony refused to spend any money on house maintenance and the house began to fall into disrepair. Tony was particularly upset one year when someone broke in and stole some of his few possessions, including a pastel drawing the historian Fanny Wale had drawn of Cecelia as a child, which had hung on the parlour wall.

Tony did not make the domestic choices many people would make. He lived without many of what most of us would consider necessities, such as running hot water and reliable electricity. His accommodation in Saint John might not unfairly have been described as a shack. He was an eccentric figure, living an almost hermit-like existence, collecting old cars, boats and pieces of machinery a lot of people would think were junk. Fortunately, his Canadian neighbours were kind and took him under their wings, helping him as he grew older with his health needs, with Sunday lunches, repairs to the shack and lifts to the airport. The shack, however, was flimsy, and Tony grew older and ever more reclusive, until the neighbours got together and told him that it was unsafe for him to continue living there. He was helped to make the decision to live permanently in the UK, which proved to be the right decision, as a heavy Canadian snowfall brought the empty shack down not long afterwards.

In Little Shelford, Doug valiantly shopped for Tony each week, as Tony found the bright lights of Great Shelford too much and hated having to go to the Co-op. Doug’s nephew, the late Eric Arbor, also took care of Tony, inviting him and Doug for Christmas lunch every year despite Tony’s criticisms that the potatoes were too crunchy or the sofa too soft. Once Doug, who was ten years older than Tony, became too old to manage Tony’s needs, other neighbours took over, cooking Tony’s meals, sorting out his medication, doing his laundry and sitting and chatting with him when he felt up to it, although quite often did not want company and simply took food before closing the door in the neighbours’ faces. The time came when the food remained on the doorstep untouched. The police were called, and Tony was found upstairs on the floor, having broken his hip falling out of bed, which had also knocked his mobile phone somewhere across the room out of reach.

After a spell in hospital, Tony was persuaded that his cottage, which by this time had huge holes in the ceiling open to the sky, rotting steep staircases and no glass in the windows, was unsuitable for him to live in. Investigations into his finances to see if he had enough money to pay for professional care uncovered the fact that he had considerable wealth that he had never spent, and so he moved into the Cambridgeshire Care Home just before he turned 90, where he had a warm room, good food and hot showers whenever he wanted. He found it difficult to settle at first, but the staff were kind and some would even talk about aeroplanes with him. Until his death, he still recognised his visitors. He faded away quietly at the age of 96.

Posted Oct 31 2023