Tributes paid to Moreton resident and former Journal reporter David Day (From Evesham Journal)

Tributes paid to Moreton resident and former Journal reporter David Day

3:53pm Tuesday 6th December 2011 in News

A WELL-known Moreton resident and former Evesham Journal reporter who covered the Cotswolds for 36 years has died.

David Day died peacefully in the Sue Ryder Care Home on November 25, aged 85, after suffering with cancer. The youngest of six children, David never married but led an active life both as a reporter for the Cotswolds, then as a member of the community after he took early retirement.

Niece Patricia Day, said: “As the last member of his generation we have lost contact with our history.”

Born in Evesham on September 2, 1926, David attended Prince Henry’s High School then joined the Journal in 1942 during the Second World War when the area had to be covered on foot.

He got his first taste of working in the Cotswolds when he cycled to Campden Magistrates Court. When he was 18 he was conscripted into the coal mines in Cannock Chase for three and a half years and wrote about his experience in his first book, The Bevin Boy.

He returned to the Journal in 1948 and was put in charge of the Cotswolds in the Moreton office where he covered the Queen’s Coronation and Silver Jubilee as well as the first arrival of the Cotswold Games in 1951.

As the Cotswold reporter he also regularly covered parish council meetings in Campden, Blockley, Moreton, Stow and Bourton and reviewed plays throughout the area in Pershore, Evesham, Cheltenham and Chipping Norton.

He wrote All over the Wold in 1998 about his life as a Cotswold reporter followed by The Duck Pond Affair in 2005.

Long-serving Journal reporter Gerry Barnett paid tribute to Mr Day. “David was a journalist of the old school, spending many hours in council meetings, local courts and the like and was very well respected wherever he went on his North Cotswold patch which he knew so well.

“He was a stickler for accuracy and fairness in all his writing and he never failed to deliver on time. David’s book on his life as a reporter in the North Cotswolds should be read by every young or aspiring journalist to see what being a district reporter was all about in those days.”

Mr Day also wrote a history of the Moreton Show - he attended every one for its first 50 years - first as reporter then in charge of the results board.

Since taking early retirement in 1984 he worked part-time at Cotswold District Council’s heritage centre in Northleach, and clerk of Bourton-on-the-Hill Parish Council.

Guy Stapleton knew David Day since the early 1950s from living in Moreton and from the Moreton History Society which David was a member since it started in 1983.

Mr Stapleton, who recently retired as chairman from the society, said: “He was always a very private man, a shy one you would almost say. He cannot have been really because he was a very good reporter.

“He was very hard working for the history society. He was a publicity man for many years and contributed a lot to our magazine.” His funeral will be held tomorrow at St.David’s Church, Moreton at 12.30pm.