Parish of Leatherhead

Parish of Leatherhead - Tributes to David Heath LVO, 22 July 1927-17 July 2006

from the September 2006 Parish Magazine
Thank You I would like to thank all the many people who have sent messages of sympathy since David's death in July. To have such tremendous support is to feel one really belongs to a Church "family". Linda Heath

Hymn: O Jesus I have promised
Psalm 46: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Tributes by Anthony Carroll (cousin in law) and Michael Lewis (friend)
Hymn: All my hope on God is founded
Reading by Stephen Madgwick (brother in law): St Paul's Epistle to the Romans ch8 v31-39
Address: Canon David Eaton
Hymn (Descant by Linda Heath): The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended

I first met David shortly before he and my cousin Linda were to be married. I was invited along with my parents and younger brother by Linda's father, my uncle John, to their house in Mallord Street in London to meet David.

In those bachelor days David had a 1931 Lanchester, a true sit up and beg type of car. We had just arrived and were standing on the pavement outside when the dashing, carefree David came careering round the corner on two wheels, finishing up with a flourish outside the house.

I was learning to drive round about this time and David kindly let me try driving his first new car, a Volkswagen Beetle. I remember that in this car you had to push the pedals much further than any car I had learnt on previously. He remained faithful to Volkswagen cars having several Beetles and then Volkswagen Golfs.

During his long and varied career he and Linda had several overseas postings. It was whilst they were visiting Hong Kong I celebrated my twenty first birthday. They sent me a pair of Chinese cufflinks and a silver tankard which I still have to this day.

Later on when in Beirut, before all the troubles when Beirut was the Monte Carlo of the Eastern Mediterranean, they adopted an "Arab alley cat" which they named Mimi. She had a somewhat Bohemian nature and they had rescued her from a basement. This may have been the start of asylum seekers coming to the UK as David and Linda gave this cat refugee status in Leatherhead where she very quickly adapted to suburban life. This cat was the start of a succession of much loved cats that they had in St Johns Avenue.

One of David's hobbies was making and exquisitely carving full size rocking horses producing several, the first one they kept and called Pegasus. Later on when our two daughters were grown up with children of their own David and Linda took on the roll of surrogate grandparents to our grandchildren with both parties benefiting greatly from this. He very kindly loaned Amy, our eldest grandchild, his beloved Pegasus rocking horse to keep in her own home and for it then to be passed on to other members of the family.

When Amy was about three years old and she and her parents were visiting Linda and David they asked Chris and Jennie where they would like to go for lunch, Amy piped up "the pub". So the pub it was. On arrival Amy announced that she wanted to sit next to "Him". Him was David, and a special relationship was born.

I shall always remember David's dry wit and the somewhat lugubrious way he had of relating his many tales and descriptions of his adventures. One of these being about 4 foot long centipedes that he encountered in the Far East and described by David as being like miniature tube trains.

His reminiscences of his work with the royal palaces, especially the restoration of Hampton Court Palace were fascinating, particularly the problems of convincing bricklayers that the manner of laying bricks was much more important than speed. Indeed 12 bricks a day was the maximum if they were to be laid to David's exacting ancient royal palace standards.

Once retired David decided he had had enough of telephones and it was always a struggle to manage to speak to him before he quickly said "Here's Linda" or "I'll just get Linda".

We shall miss him enormously and we will always remember him with great affection.

The next was compiled from tributes from various people received by Linda Heath and delivered at A Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of David Hugh Heath on Friday 28th July 2006 by Mike Lewis, who made a small addition:

David was such a modest and unassuming person that he could never believe that anyone really cared about him or took any real interest in him. He would have been absolutely amazed to read all the many, many tributes that people have paid him in their letters and cards to Linda.

What do people most remember about him? The things that stand out most of all in nearly all these tributes are that he was a true gentleman; his ready wit and humour; his kindness and concern for others, both young and old; and his readiness to help in any situation of crisis or need. Never was this seen more than after the fire in this church in 1989 when David worked tirelessly to help repair some of the damage done to the fabric of the church. The photo on the cover of the service sheet shows him in his blue boiler suite, patiently cleaning the angels on the reredos behind the altar.

He spent many days working on them - Alison Wright wrote an amusing article for the parish magazine about the blue ghost who haunted the church, emerging from time to time to the churchyard for a quick cigarette. Another task he helped with after the fire was dismantling the old pipe organ and laying out over 2,000 pipes on the pews.

Among the many other things he did for the church were lifting and repairing all the metal grids over the central heating pipes in the floor which were in a very dangerous condition. When any of the wooden supports for the pews collapsed, it was always David who came and re-fixed them: Needless to say, he never expected thanks or gratitude for whatever he undertook - he just got on with the job.

When the Friends of the Parish Church held an auction in 1988 to raise money for the restoration of the church, David made a small very simple rocking horse for it. In the churchyard, he was always ready to help with any clearing, and there was a time in the late 1980s when he and Warner Wright spent days cutting the grass at the far end of the churchyard with scythes. In later years when he was not able to help with work in the churchyard, he spent an enormous amount of time with Linda helping to finish recording all the memorial inscription in the churchyard.

In 1988, when Linda was churchwarden, she designed the churchyard Garden of Remembrance for burial of ashes and David drew the plans for this.

He also gave a lot of his time and attention to helping with any projects for the Museum at Hampton Cottage. When it was decided to excavate the well in the garden there in 1990, David was there every day with the team helping to sift through all the earth and rubble brought up to the surface. Using his talent for jigsaw puzzles, he was able to reassemble a large meat platter from the many fragments of it brought up from different levels in the well.

When he was not engaged in all these activities, he spent a great deal of time, as we know, making rocking horses. Many people used to stop and chat to him on their way past the house and watch his progress on the various rocking horses as he carved them in the garage. One of David's rocking horses has graced the landing of Cherry House [the Lewis home] since 1994 and has given great pleasure to all of our grandchildren.

He was an avid reader and had a very extensive knowledge of history and foreign countries and their histories. He was a tremendous support to Linda in all her activities and took immense pride in what she did, not least in when she was elected as Chairman of the Local History Society. On one occasion, this posed an unexpected problem when he went to help at the Museum, but had no key. When he went to collect a key from the people who held it, they asked who he was, and he had to give the somewhat curious reply - "Oh" he said, "I'm the Chairman's husband!"

We have heard how many people described him as a true gentleman, and this would have pleased him more than anything. When he was a small boy at school his class was asked to write down what they thought a gentleman was. David wrote "A gentleman is someone who everyone respects." David was held not only in respect, but with great love and affection by all who knew him.

David was born in Ealing and went to school there where he showed an early interest in both art and history. At the age of 7 or 8 he created his own version of the Bayeux Tapestry and wrote the following delightfully succinct poem about the death of King William Rufus:

Rufus the Red
Was shot in the head
And as he fell dead
He said "Oh my poor head!"

He became an architect, but his main interest was in the construction rather than the design of buildings. As with everything else, he was an immensely practical man - definitely a `hands-on' type of architect. In 1953 he joined the Colonial Service and went out to Malaya where he spent five years designing and constructing many buildings, including schools, and a training college, now the University of North Malaysia.

This was during the Emergency when the Communist terrorists were creating havoc there and David spent nearly all his free time fighting terrorists in the jungle with the Reserve Corps of the Federation of Malaya. He left Malaya when it became independent in 1958 and returned to England where he worked at Chessington for what later became the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, designing army barracks in Hong Kong.

He and Linda were married in 1960 and lived first in Little Bookham, but in 1961 they went out to Hong Kong for three years where he was much happier constructing the barracks and working on site. They returned to England in 1964 and bought their present house in Leatherhead in 1965 but again they were sent abroad - this time to the Lebanon where they lived in Beirut for three years. David was in charge of all Embassy and Consular buildings throughout the Middle East - the work entailed a lot of security measures and meant he had to travel regularly over a very wide territory from Athens and the Balkan states to Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Cyprus.

On returning to England in 1964 he worked for various departments in the Civil Service over the next twenty years, some of which also were not without their excitements. He was working for the Post Office & Telecommunications department when the IRA left a bomb near the top of the Post Office Tower. Because of its height, this presented quite a logistical rebuilding problem.

Later on, David was working for the London royal palaces when Hampton Court caught fire, but luckily he had retired by the time the fire occurred at Windsor, or we might wonder if he had become careless with his matches! Being Surveyor to the Royal Palaces was his final post in which, again, his work was primarily concerned with security. For his work in this field he was made a Lieutenant of the Victorian Order (LVO) on his 60th birthday in 1987. He particularly valued this order because it is a gift from the Queen, not from the government.

As we have heard, David was a very active person and his illness in recent months restricted his activities more and more, which was very hard for him to accept. However, he was able to remain at home until just two days before the end of his life. When the end came, it was sudden and unexpected, but perhaps that is how he would have wished it, and perhaps the happiest outcome for him under the circumstances.

(After this, the Vicar went on to say quite a lot about David's character and what a stay and support he had been in helping to look after the church building. He finished up by saying that no doubt he would be helping to 'touch up' some angels in Heaven!)

from the August Newsletter of the Leatherhead & District Local History Society
DAVID HEATH R.I.P.

The Society mourns the passing of a staunch member. The husband of our president Linda Heath. He passed away on 16th July. Many were present at his funeral service which took place at St Mary and St Nicholas church, Leatherhead on Friday, 28th July.

David who was an architect by profession, played an important part in the affairs of the Society and was a key player in the development of the museum in its early days. Roddy Clube who was with him during the post-war years when both were posted abroad on Government business, tells of David’s role in helping to ensure the safe conservation of artefacts destined for the Leatherhead museum whilst the building was being renovated.

In the first instance the objects were stored in a garage, then subsequently transferred to a basement at a building named The Priory (still the museum’s store house). There was plenty of space here but the extreme dampness of the cellar was a threat to the sound preservation of many items. He explained how David came to the rescue by constructing an airtight enclosure which housed de-humidifying equipment. Thus many vulnerable artefacts were saved from deterioration.

Speakers at the funeral service paid tribute to David, first and foremost as a kind and gentle person ever ready to lend a hand in a practical way whenever there was a need. A perfect example of this was during the aftermath of the serious fire at Leatherhead parish church : he gave himself unstintingly to assist in the renovation of the damaged interior.

Referring to his work at the museum, one speaker recalled the time when the contents of the well in the garden were being dug out and sorted. This was an immense job with many curious objects being mingled with much debris. Thanks to his skill and patience David was able to piece together assortments of pottery fragments at various levels. His painstaking efforts resulted in the reconstruction of some interesting pieces of domestic tableware from earlier times.