Geoff was born on the 24th of September 1932 at a maternity hospital in Queens’s road Sudbury. As a young boy he lived with his parents at Fishers Farm in Belchamp Walter where his grandfather was a tenant farmer. When he was 2 the family moved to Colchester road Bures. Geoff attended Bures primary school from the age of 4 up until the age of 14.
Geoff in these early years of his life used to help drive the Gordon Webbers farm cows through the village and up to the parlour and help hand milk them. At Parsonace farm in Bures Geoff would enjoy doing odd jobs for Doctor Thomas Wood -a Doctor of music he claims to have bought waltzing Matilda back to England. Also when Geoff had left school he planted approximately 3,000 apple trees on the farm.
During the war Geoff kept pigs with his father and Uncle Reuben where ½ a pig had to go to the ministry of food and they had the rest. They also kept bees for the honey and this also provided them with extra sugar for feeding the bees during the winter. This sugar also was used for jam which meant the bees got a weaker solution. Geoff as a young boy used to play at Butlers farm near the Bomb and armed dumps and had bought some items home to make fireworks with them.
Towards the end of the war years the yanks had auxiliary fuel tanks for their fighters which were dumped when they were empty, so Geoff and the boys would make canoes out of them.
At the age of 14 Geoff joined the Cadets in Sudbury and would cycle from Bures to Sudbury twice a week.
At the age of 17 ½ Geoff went into the Royal engineers. On the 10th of November 1950 he had set sail and landed in Singapore on New Year’s Day 1951. Geoff unfortunately was sea sick for most of the journey. Geoff spent 3 years in Malaya. When it was time to go home Geoff was very pleased to be leaving as he had wrote a letter home to his mother sounding ecstatic that he was going home by plane.
He was demobbed in 1955 and finished his engineering course at college for the army.
Geoff had written a letter to Ernest Doe asking if he could be considered for a job as an agricultural engineer. He was gladly accepted and was employed By Ernest Does for 38 years as an Agricultural engineer and welder at the Sudbury depot. His military mechanical skills were soon put to good use in agriculture, as then big scale mechanical changes were taking place in the late 50s and early 60s. Bigger tractors and bigger combines and the invention of the Triple D tractor built by Ernest Doe, to which Geoff had help build. This was named the Triple D after Does, Dual drive.
Geoff’s means of transport had been a motorbike and side car, however, he now had the use of the company vehicle an old Thames van following this he drove an Austin Gypsy jeep, and a land rover 100 with power driven welder and gas bottles all kitted out for a mobile workshop which covered most of Suffolk and Essex and sometimes in to foreign tertiary of Norfolk. Geoff was always happier to be in the field all weathers than to be in the workshop at Sudbury.
As the 70s approached tractors became even bigger and more technical with electrics and hydraulics. Geoff was always doing courses on how to maintain and repair these technical machines. Then Geoff’s biggest challenge in the 80s was computers, he hated them especially when he filled in for the workshop manager, he couldn’t wait to get back to his mobile workshop. In the 90s Ernest Doe was looking to slim down the workforce and to make some redundancies of the younger apprentice staff, Geoff jumped in and said “what was the point of making younger staff redundant after training them for years” so Geoff asked if he could take early retirement.
Holidays could not be taken during the harvest time so they went away at Whitsun and again in September usually by the sea. Margaret would pack up everything ready to go and once Geoff had got home from work freshened up and changed they would leave and have a fish and chip supper when they got there. Geoff hated to get up in the mornings so a 5am start to go to Wales or the south coast was hard and you could guarantee that Geoff would always be in the bathroom.
Geoff joined the Farm/Machinery/Preservation/Society. (F.M.P.S) in 1967. They held the Ye old time rally at Melford hall in 1969 then every 4 years, until they started having the rally every year at Waldingfield and then later at Gosfield. Geoff was in charge of the classic car section with over 100 cars entered for showing. Geoff loved his old cars his Lanchester, an Armstrong Siddley Rover 95 and then his Range Rovers a true engineer.
In 1970 they decided to extend the bungalow Geoff doing the work, started in 1971 and completed in 1973 Not bad considering he could only work on it weekends and in the evenings and even designed and made his own staircase.
Geoff took retirement in 1993 but kept busy with his garden and the allotment growing flowers, fruit and vegetables and still providing for his family
Margaret and Geoff had met through mutual friends on a blind date. Margaret had only 2 requests that he wasn’t ginger and that he didn’t have a moustache- oops Well needless to say in June 1957 they were married and started their married life in Bures. They remained there for 3 years until they found their home in Foxearth in 1960. The saying goes new home, new baby and in October of that year the 1st of 2 children arrived – Nigel in the October, then Carolyn in February 1965 . 0
Geoff enjoyed holidays with friends and family and his love for old cars. Always welcoming, kind and gentle, and on behalf of Martin and myself so pleased and happy to have had such an incredible and loving father-in-law. He will be deeply and sincerely missed by us all.