Tower and Town, February 2020

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George Johnson

George died on Christmas Eve. Three years ago he talked to Tower and Town and in his memory we reprint extracts from the article we published then, with an update.

George grew up in Marlborough, the youngest of three children whose father was a painter and decorator. In the Second World War he was conscripted as a ‘Bevin Boy’ and did his war service in the mines of South Wales. There “in the canteen” he met Nan, a miner’s daughter. They married in 1948 after George was demobbed, a marriage that lasted 60 years. Back in Marlborough he worked as a painter for Eade’s and after living on the corner where Dible and Roy are now, George and Nan had their own house built and gave it its unpronounceable Welsh name.

From 1963, he went to work at the College and became general foreman in the Estate Department. After he retired he continued as supervisor in the dining hall, where he was valued for his straight and easy manner with the pupils, to whom he was “George”.

George served for over thirty years in the local ‘retained’ fire brigade, staffed by volunteers, many of them in the building trade. He and his colleagues were called out for the major fires that scarred Marlborough in the second half of the 20th century: Dible and Roy’s, where the One Stop and Post Office are today; the Polly, for which – he was always reticent here - George, Frank Odey and Bob Cox were awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery for rescuing the children upstairs; and the tannery, where the “water froze” as they pumped it from the river. After George retired, he was awarded the medal for long service with the Fire Brigade and the BEM.

He was a respected and much-liked man, mainly because he respected and liked other people. He was undemonstratively steady and serious, but always sociable and hugely good-humoured. When he was 85 he did a parachute jump for charity and raised £3000. When he died, his coffin was borne down Marlborough High Street on a 1943 vintage fire engine and round the court of the College in front of scores of staff and pupils, who applauded him out of the gates on his way to the crematorium at Wootton Bassett – which was full beyond its capacity.

John Osborne