LIONEL NUTLEY OF KESWICK

Last updated 07:52, Sunday, 11 May 2008

CUMBRIA’S former music man, Lionel Nutley, has died in hospital at the age of 101.

The former county music adviser came to Cumberland in 1950 to work for the county council’s education committee.

The following year he founded the rural choirs movement, with the idea of small choirs meeting in farmhouse kitchens and coming together once a year for a concert.

He was an examiner for Trinity College of Music, conducted the Cumberland Symphony Orchestra and the Cumbria Guild of Singers and was also closely connected with the Cumberland Youth Orchestra. He served as organist and choirmaster at the Southey Street Methodist Church in Keswick.

Music was an integral part of Mr Nutley’s life, from the age of nine when he joined the church choir in Garstang, where he lived. His mother bought a piano to help with his lessons.

He was born in Dover where his father was posted in the army, moving to Ireland and then Chichester.

The family moved north to Garstang when his father retired, although he was soon called up again when the First World War began.

Aged 11 at the end of the war, Mr Nutley went to Lancaster Grammar School before going on to Leeds Training College to become a teacher.

He taught in Manchester, Preston, Aldermaston and Ipswich before joining the RAF and working in bomb disposal. During his time in the RAF, he was involved in youth and adult music.

He got back into music and achieved his ambition of coming to a country area when the post in Cumberland came up. He and his wife Freda, from whom he divorced after 39 years of marriage, came to Cockermouth for a year then moved to Mealsgate. The couple had a daughter, Janice, who gained a degree at Oxford and also went on to have a career in music teaching.

He died peacefully last Tuesday in Keswick Mary Hewetson Cottage Hospital. His funeral will take place on Monday at St John’s Church in Keswick.