The Brown family were from Kessingland in Suffolk and many of Richard’s early holidays were spent there with his grandparents. In 1954, PC Brown retired from the police force and the Browns moved to the family home “Rambleside” in Kessingland. Richard’s mother remained at this house for over 50 years before moving to Loughborough to live with Richard, Sally and their three young boys. The Brown family have lots of happy memories of spending their summer holidays with “Nan” and enjoying the East Anglian coast.

After attending Lowestoft Grammar School, Richard went to Nottingham University in 1962 to study Chemistry. In 1965, he started working as a Computer Programmer at English Electric Leo Marconi in Kidsgrove. When Richard retired in 2010 as Director of Technology for Emerson Process Management Ltd, he had 45 years continuous service – though the company had changed hands many times during Richard’s employment. He was a well-respected manager, held in high regard in both the UK and the USA. Richard’s line management was in Austin, Texas and he was particularly skilled in negotiating outcomes that were favourable to the UK where the culture and agenda were very different. His staff were particularly thankful for Richard’s charm and tenacity which ensured that the UK based teams (who were responsibly for many of the patents and intellectual property) were not made to relocate to the States.

Although Richard had lots of interests, bellringing was his lifelong passion. He learned to ring in Kessingland as a teenager once his voice had broken and he was no longer able to be in the church choir. He, together with friends including Michael Parker and Mike Utton, cycled throughout East Anglia to visit practices and meetings. Richard, Michael and Mike all rang their first peal on 21st May, 1960 at Lowestoft. A special peal was arranged in May 2010 to mark the 50th anniversary and both Richard and Sally rang in this together with several of Richard’s longstanding ringing friends.

When Richard went to Nottingham University, he became an active member of the Nottingham University bellringing society and held various offices including President. He continued to support the society throughout his life. He often recalled a young Simon Humphrey attending practices at Wollaton in the 1960s and he was proud to ring in Simon’s first peal. Simon tells of how Richard had helped him in his early ringing and conducting career. To this day, he has saved compositions hand-written for him by Richard.

Richard was proud to belong to many ringing societies including the Society of Royal Cumberland Youths. He was very supportive of Sally during her recent term of office as President of the Leicester Diocesan Guild of Church Bell Ringers.

Richard was a member of the Loughborough Parish Church band for many years, holding the office of Ringing Master for several of them. He was Tower Captain at Oaks-in-Charnwood and, prior to COVID, the Monday night practices were exceptionally well attended. He was a regular supporter at Copt Oak; the new 3^rd rope which adorned Richard’s coffin has been donated in his memory and is now known as “Richard’s rope”. He loved welcoming visitors and encouraging learners – and socialising in the pub afterwards. He had a terrific sense of humour and kept everyone entertained with his interesting and amusing stories. Tears of joy often streamed down his face as he told his newest jokes, usually messing up the punch line.

Richard enjoyed ringing peals and his final peal total was 1123 (taking 3038 hours and 9 minutes) of which he conducted 34. His rate of peal ringing increased considerably when he met Sally and he rang 158 peals in 1996, the year before their first son was born. For the next few years, Sally and Richard rang most of their peals separately whilst the other one babysat their three young boys. Richard rang peals in 417 towers, with his leading tower being Loughborough Bell Foundry where he rang 367 peals. He rang 291 peals for the Leicester DG and 138 for the Freehold Society, of which he was a founder member. His leading peal ringers were Colin Lord with 322 peals and he rang 310 peals with Sally.

He was a regular member and organiser of the “Tuesday night peal band” at the bell foundry. Many of the peals were conducted by Roland Beniston, an exceptionally clever man who was very much old-school; composing and checking the truth of peals with pen and paper. None of this modern-day computer-proving nonsense! On occasions the compositions turned out to be false with some of the changes repeated. Steve Stanford also worked at Emerson with Richard and fairly regular Tuesday morning appointments took place in Richard or Steve’s office, computer checking Roland’s composition so that a false peal was avoided that evening. All in a morning’s work!

One of Richard’s long held ambitions was to reach his 80th birthday, and this he did in style. Over his birthday week, several parties were held with large numbers of friends and lots of ringing and socialising took place. As ever, he was friendly, kind, generous, passionate and full of life – he thoroughly enjoyed being the life and soul of the party and amusing us all with his many stories. It was therefore somewhat of a shock when he collapsed the day after his final party and never regained consciousness.

Richard was the proud father of Steven and Emma (from his first marriage) and Edward, Simon and Christopher from his marriage to Sally. He had 5 grandchildren; Nathalie, Juliette, Amy, Elizabeth and Jack. Sadly, Richard died a few days before Simon and Christopher gained their 1^st Class Masters degrees. Richard would have been so proud that all five of his children were graduates.

Richard’s funeral was held at Oaks-in-Charnwood on August 5^th 2024 and the tiny village church was packed with over 200 people who had come to celebrate Richard’s life. Some lovely, well-struck, open ringing took place before and after the service.

The service was conducted by Rev. Phillippa Taylor, whom Richard had taught to ring several years earlier. The eulogy was read by son Simon and tributes were given by Andrew Higson and Steve Stanford. Simon, an operatic tenor graduate of the Royal College of Music, performed Gebet by Hugo Wolf and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Following the service, the adjacent village hall was vibrant as people shared their memories of Richard. Many people were wearing green stickers with numbers on. Andy Ward was handing these out to people indicating how many peals each attendee had rung with Richard!

In his tribute, Steve Stanford described Richard as dependable, diplomatic, engaging, impish, fun-loving, selfless, resilient and persistent. He was the glue that held people together and he absolutely delighted in doing so. It was one of Richard’s great strengths, that he could cajole and motivate a disparate and sometimes reluctant group, and that he could do so while smiling and not causing the least offense. It was difficult to turn Richard down or disagree with him, and if you did, even if for perfectly legitimate reasons, you usually felt a sense of guilt and regret for doing so. Richard’s motivation in organising ringing was always principally to support others, and not because of any personal desire to further his own ambition or peal totals.

We have been truly grateful for all the messages and support that we have received following Richard’s passing. It is clear that Richard was loved and held in high regard by a great number of people and he has left a huge number of happy memories behind.

Sally Brown