October 16, 2022

Nicholas Gaunt

Nicky Gaunt (S1955) died on 27 July 2022 of complications from injuries sustained three weeks earlier in a gliding accident.  He was 85.

Nicky was from a family that had been weaving wool in Yorkshire for centuries.  Their company, Reuben Gaunt and Sons, specialised in high quality worsteds.  The mill, in Pudsey, still contained at its heart the enormous waterwheel that had powered its looms before the days of steam.  Its staff members were treated more like family retainers than standard employees, just as they always had been.  The chairman, Nicky’s uncle, was “Mr Reginald”.  Nicky was “Master Nicholas” till the day the mill closed in the Nineteen Nineties, overcome by newer and cheaper overseas competition.  This was good industrial relations, old-fashioned, paternalist but humane. Nicky’s parents, although not Quakers themselves, admired Quaker values, which is probably why they sent one of their sons to a Quaker school.

Nicky spent five happy, cheerfully mischievous years at LP.  He was a serial breaker of school rules, but misdemeanours, such as illicit visits to the cinema or hitch-hiking expeditions to London, were routinely forgiven, since he was without guile or malice.  He excelled at sport, especially gymnastics, rugby and athletics.  He was one of the school’s best artists.  And, above all, he shone as one of its elite band of glider pilots, under the tutelage of the Head of Physics, John Simpson.

He went on to Leeds University, where he studied textile engineering.  While there he applied to join the University Air Squadron in order to learn how to fly powered aircraft, telling the interviewing panel of retired RAF officers that, in the event of armed combat, he would, as a Quaker, be able to participate only in a non-combatant role.  Impressed by his sincerity and his charm, they agreed.

It was also while he was at Leeds that he met Diana Hotchkin, who was studying English and later went on to become a teacher. They were married for 64 years, each busy with their own interests and yet a solid team, based on mutual support and encouragement.  Diana would regularly drive hundreds of miles towing their glider trailer to wherever Nicky had landed, while he would join in and support her literary and dramatic activities.

Not only was Nicky an enlightened manager and employer, he was also a leading light in the wider industry, always ready to share ideas and advice.  He was president of both the Confederation of British Wool Textiles and the Bradford Textile Society.

Gliding, which he had first taken up at LP, was his great passion.  He competed all over the UK and Europe, and even in New Zealand.  He was a member of the Yorkshire Gliding Club for over half a century and its chairman for many years.  Even the onset of ankylosing spondylitis failed to dampen his enthusiasm.

Nicky was very much a renaissance man, keenly involved in the arts in Yorkshire, particularly with the Ryedale Festival, and further afield with the Edinburgh Festival.  He had an amazing memory, able at the drop of a hat to quote from a wide range of poetry and prose, and in later life joined a writing group.

Children adored him.  One of our daughters lives in Yorkshire, and her three children called him their Yorkshire grandpa.  He seemed eternally youthful, and one of my abiding memories will be of him, aged eighty, sliding down the banister to greet them in the foyer of the Grand Theatre in Leeds.

He is survived by Diana, his son Patrick, his daughter Rachel, and two grandchildren.

Richard Thomas  (S1956)

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