My dear father was the most humble of men. He was a labourer by necessity, his mother not having the connections or wherewithal to help him acquire a trade or to keep him at school for self-advancement.

He never in his life earned more than £10 a week, even when he had fourteen children to rear. Indeed he often had no employment. He once travelled to England in a futile search for work. He joked later to his children that he had stayed at Mother Greene’s! We were horrified to learn that he meant he had slept in the open!

Today his widow (and your editor’s mother) is in her eighties, the only surviving member of that first community that moved in to The Meadow in February 1948. Her health is failing a little but she is the proud mother of fourteen, grandmother of fifty and great-grandmother of twenty-two! 

 Sonny did not survive to see the marriage even of one of his children.

When I was a young lad (and early youth) my father and I would tend the family grave, which contained the remains of his mother and those of his side who had gone before. He would ask me to return the favour when he passed on. A shiver passed through me. I could not contemplate the world without him.

A few short years later and I was tending the same plot that now contained his mortal remains. A simple headstone with his surname and the Meadow address marks the spot. Apart from his children, my father achieved very little on earth, at least in the world’s eyes - or in regard to things treasured in today's world. He travelled no further than England, and that once, merely in search of work. He had very simple tastes.

Yet there is never a month goes by, even now, but someone of my acquaintance will lovingly recall Sonny (sometimes comparing me unfavourably with him!). ‘He worked in our house shortly before his death. A lovely man. A gentleman.’ And occasionally, ribbing me, they’ll add, ‘What happened to you?’

I have met many people in my life – already I have survived eleven years longer than my father – and I have extolled the virtues of a number on this site.

But I have never met his equal, and never will.

He was simply the best.