IT WAS with great sadness that I learned last Saturday of the death of Peter Stedman.

Only a week or two earlier we had featured one of Peter's old photos of the Hoe Grammar School cub pack.

The last surviving founder-member of the Plymouth Barbican Association, Peter was a well-known figure in post-war Plymouth: he was chairman of both the Junior and Senior Chamber of Commerce and played a key role in the development of the Sutton Harbour Company. As a chartered surveyor, with what was then Taylor Son and Creber, Peter also helped a number of major local businessmen in their early days, among them hotelier and restaurateur Estathios Hajiyianni and cash and carry man Robert Daniel. Peter was also the first person to have had a private box at Plymouth Argyle.

A former JP and a Prison Visitor, Peter was also instrumental in helping to set up the Dart Valley Railway with former school chum Bob Saunders. Back in September 1939 and aged 18 Peter had signed up for the Army, the day after war was declared, and his military service over the next six years saw him present at Dunkirk, El Alamein, Italy and the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy.

It was returning to Plymouth on leave, after the Blitz, that fired him up a decade or so later to do his bit for preserving what was left of old Plymouth. There can be little doubt that, without Peter Stedman and his colleagues on the Plymouth Barbican Association, much of the Barbican today would look like a 1950s council estate by the sea, with just one or two interesting old buildings, rather than the delightful historic quarter that it is.

Of all Peter's achievements, however, there was one in particular of which he was most proud; as chairman of the Chamber he was the one who successfully campaigned to get the stripes reinstated on Smeaton's Tower.

A small but significant contribution in the long and colourful life of a man who was very much of the 'old school' – a man who would get stuck in and get things done, rather than wait around in the hope that someone else might do it. A good example to all… and a great loss.