My father, Maurice Ribbans, who has died aged 82, was fond of saying: “I’m a man of many parts … but not many of them in working order.” His family disagreed; the many lives he squeezed into one – as journalist, motorway-maker, Royal Shakespeare Company extra, tourist guide – were all played beautifully.
Maurice was born in Northampton, the only child of George and Rhoda, and went to the local grammar school. He began his working life in 1948 as a cub reporter on the town’s evening newspaper, the Chronicle & Echo, where he relished his time in news and as the sports columnist “Flag Kick”.
Ten years later, and with a growing family, he moved to the civil engineering firm of Sir Owen Williams & Partners, which was then busy building the M1. His job title was lands reference officer but today it might be called PR – for it was Maurice’s job to visit farmers with the news that their best field was earmarked for a motorway. It was an unenviable task, but colleagues recall he did it so well that he was more likely to be invited in for tea and cake than ordered off the land. His diplomatic skills must have been noticed because he was appointed MBE for services to transport in 1988.
Maurice’s abiding passions were history – as a mature student he gained a diploma in archaeology from the University of Leicester — and the countryside. He was able to fully indulge both after he retired in 1995. By now living near Stratford-upon-Avon, he first enlisted as an extra with the RSC, appearing in several productions in Stratford and on tour. He later worked as chief steward at Harvard House, wrote a book on ancient Clopton Bridge, “A short history of the Gateway to Stratford-upon-Avon”, and was for many years a marshal at the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations.
But his best supporting role was as “consort” to my mother, Sheila, when she was chairman of Stratford district council. Maurice and Sheila first met at the age of four but their romance began at 15 when he invited her to listen to Twelfth Night on the wireless. They remained a devoted couple for 67 years, married for 61.
For the last 12 years of his life, Maurice was a volunteer garden guide with the National Trust at Hidcote Manor Garden, in Gloucestershire. The garden, its many visitors and his colleagues brought him immense joy and he considered it an honour when in 2012 he was asked to represent Hidcote at Westminster Abbey for a service marking the centenary of the death of the trust’s founder, Octavia Hill.
Maurice is survived by Sheila, their three children, Bill, Kim and me, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. At Hidcote, a bench in his memory now stands at Heaven’s Gate.
