Richard was born in Shrewsbury in 1919, the elder son of Arthur and Kitty Taylor. Arthur died when Richard was just four years old, the consequence of being gassed in the first world war.

Richard was brought up at Cruckton, Shropshire ... a beautiful home with gardens, tennis courts, croquet lawn, horses, shooting, and a billiard room.

In 1924 Tom Stuart Menteath came as tutor to Richard and Ronald, and in 1930 Tom and Kitty were married.

Richard was educated at Beaudesert Park and Marlborough College, where he relished the many and varied opportunities, especially on the sporting front.

In 1938 he joined the RAF, and served with distinction as a fighter pilot. Indeed, it was while instructing pilots in Rhodesia that he met and fell in love with Pat. Richard and Pat married in January 1944. Pat was 21 and Richard 25. War-time marriages were often found to be fragile – the product of an attitude of "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die"; theirs was a shining exception, for one could not find through their fifty six years of marriage a more devoted couple.

In 1947, Richard and his family bought Vinehall School, which had been evacuated to Devon during the war. Recently it had returned with about 40 pupils and to a somewhat battered building. Richard and Pat then started their life’s work – to build up and make a success of the school. They took over the running of it in 1957.

They made a perfect pair... Richard full of enthusiasm and plans: Pat the organised one who saw to all the details. Vinehall prospered. In 1965 the school was converted to a Charitable Trust, giving added strength to its direction, and in 1977 Pat and Richard were able to retire to their beloved Forest Glen, having built a fine School, stamped with their hallmark.

In 2000 Pat died, and Richard was desolate. Happily he found friendship with Helen, and together they toured the world and lived life to the full.

Facts, facts; useful things for charting the stops of life and seeing who gets off and on; not so good at conjuring the actual person or the actual bus.

So tell us about the man.

Well one of the things that was special about Richard was that he was very much his own man .... he didn’t really care what anybody thought about him, and yet paradoxically he almost always generated respect and affection.

One of my first encounters with him was on the family cabin cruiser ... do you remember, "Saluki"? I was courting Sally at the time, so decorum dictated that I share a cabin with Richard. After a few hands of bridge, and a few tumblers of whisky, Richard fell into bed and immediately started snoring with a vengeance ... the whole boat reverberating. Within moments, Sally’s mother bellowed from the adjacent cabin, "Hit him, David, for God’s sake hit him." Well being a respectful and anxious prospective son in law, I was hesitant to carry out this instruction ... in the event the wallop with my pillow had not the slightest effect. He snored on, happy and oblivious.

At first sight Richard cut a slightly unexpected figure as a Headmaster ... he was not the nattiest of dressers ... "My God, Ricky, look at the state of your trousers!" ... and he was almost always wreathed in smoke. Indeed, when I first met him at Vinehall, I was puzzled to spot grass cuttings in his hair and his trouser turn ups. It was only later when I saw him charging round the golf course on the tractor with the gang mowers behind throwing up clouds of grass cuttings in their wake that the explanation for his appearance became clear.

Then Richard had the unusual habit of using his cigarette packet as a kind of early filofax, reading his notes from it during notices at lunch time. What would the inspectors make of that, nowadays I wonder!!!

It was only when you came to know him a bit better that you began to understand why he was such a wonderful Headmaster, and a wonderful father too. For a start, he loved children ... in fact I think in many respects he was always a boy at heart ... and he was always full of enthusiasm and fun.

Many Vines, and especially Sally and Mary, will remember him building camps , and the wonderful system he invented for "registering" the camps... his fiendish obstacle course on Sports day .... his cunning spin on the tennis court ... the fact that you had to beat him at table tennis or billiards to win the device on your shield. There were games of giants and ogres round the school on dark nights, and Strictly Come dancing in the front hall of a winter evening. And on a winter’s day the golf course was transformed into ski slopes and toboggan runs ... all such fun.

Andrew Gilbart can remember Richard showing a trio of puzzled but willing 12 year olds in rehearsal exactly how one should play the witches' scene from Macbeth, complete with a frightening demonstration of his repertoire of banshee wailing and twirling headscarves. And I am told that it led to a quite riveting and terrifying performance from the boys!

Richard loved geography, and was good at sharing his interest ... there was the ancient epidiascope which introduced the children to the countries around the world, and a whole range of geographical and geological features, and Taylor’s "Potted Geography" and "Potted History" to see you through CE

And he loved the natural world ... the grounds at Vinehall were a constant source of pleasure and delight to him, and, a little unexpectedly, he loved flower arranging, and was wonderfully good at it.

In his day, rest was rest at Vinehall ... none of this orchestra practice or gymnastics ... all pupils were on their beds for forty minutes, and the Headmaster was invariably fast asleep, and snoring, too.

Richard was a great believer in what he liked to call "limited suffering" .... several spoonfuls of sugar, good big dollops of cream, a schooner of sherry before lunch, a generous mouthwash with whisky each evening (to keep the teeth in good order, of course) - the grandchildren liked this trait, and always made a point of asking him to serve them at the table because they knew this meant that they would get lashings of chocolate sauce on their ice cream.

Richard loved his golf. I am afraid I was a constant source of disappointment to him in this respect. I remember early on having a round with him at Rye, and him sensing that a couple of old buffers were becoming impatient behind us as we fished for my ball in the undergrowth... not a problem ... he waves them through, bellowing for all to hear, "Come on through ... I’ve got a complete rabbit here." Fortunately the grandsons made up for the son in law’s inadequacies, and Richard was delighted to carry off the Family foursomes cup with Jim on several occasions.

Richard was not a complicated man... what you saw was what you got. He was man who loved life, and shared his pleasure in living with all around him.

But there was a solid core to him which I can only describe as good ... yes, Richard was a good man.

He believed in his King and Country, and when the time came he was ready to stand up and be counted.

He was a man of his word. If he said he would do something, he would do it, come what may.

But more than anything he was a great enthusiast, and a great optimist ... one of his favourite sayings, which he often came out with on the golf course when his ball, or his partner’s ball, went sailing into the impenetrable rough at Rye, was .. and the phrase was always delivered in a deep and sonorous voice, "There are worse places to be". He would say it even when it appeared to be far from true.

But this was the way Richard lived his life ... he always looked on the bright side of things, always saw the best in people and was always keen to encourage others, especially the young. And it was this trait, coupled with his absolute integrity and enormous zest for living, which made such a wonderful combination, and which found such perfect expression in the creation of a prep school in East Sussex.

For Richard, Vinehall was his life time’s work, and he liked to regard it as his gift to the nation. He was justly proud of it, because it really was place that reflected his personality: a place for enthusiasts who enjoy learning and developing their talents, a place imbued with a generosity of spirit, and a place to make friends and have fun.

Vinehall was close to his heart, but closer still were his wife, Pat, his friend, Helen, and his two wonderful daughters .

Richard was a loyal and devoted husband and a committed family man ... he adored his two daughters, and would do anything for them ... he welcomed Robin and me into the family with complete trust and generosity and always supported all our endeavours, and he was the same with all his grandchildren. (Although it is true that he did use to embarrass Jim by sounding his horn every time he scored a boundary. And in his later years Richard was a true friend to Helen.

He was, I think, incapable of deceit or spitefulness ... they were just not in his nature. He could be a little thoughtless sometimes, but never unkind.

Tom has suggested that we might buy a bench in memory of grandpa, place it overlooking the fourth tee at Rye, and have on the inscription "There are worse places to be". I think Richard would love that.

Even now, I imagine he is settling down in Heaven, reunited with his lovely Pat, and concluding, rather cheerfully, "that there are, indeed, worse places to be!"

Yes, he was a lovely man, and a good, kind man, and a lot of fun, and we shall miss him ... we shall miss him a lot.

David Chaplin

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