Noticeboard

Roderick John WINYARD (G53-58)

1939-2003

Roderick John Winyard, an OF solicitor living at Walberswick, died in March, 2003 at the age of 62 from heart failure. I must have been the last non-family member to see him alive.

He lived at Alexander Cottages, Walberswick, which had been in the family for decades and moved in on the death of his mother. Generations of his family had been publicans at Frostenden, Suffolk (near Wrentham). In the 1920s Adnams Brewery had moved his grandparents to their pub, The Anchor, one of two pubs in Walberswick.

Roderick's father had been principal of Rush & Winyard, the then well-known Southwold estate agents and valuers. They were also land agents to the Blois estate. Like Roderick, his father had congenital heart problems. The father had died in his 30s with the result that the Roderick's mother took over the running of Rush & Winyard whilst Roderick was at Fram. Roderick went on to read law at Newcastle (then part of Durham University). After initially working for a legal practice somewhere in the vicinity of Chancery Lane, he ended up as a sole practice solicitor in Suffolk.

Roderick was a very eccentric, but well-known solicitor, always greeted, when out and about, by district judges and police officers. "Mr. Winyard", as they called him was also well-known by many who found themselves on the wrong side of the law, whom he represented since, apart from his conveyancing, he undertook a great deal of work for losers and no-hopers on criminal or breathalyser charges. Indeed, he told me that it was being called-out regularly in the small hours, as duty solicitor to Lowestoft Police Station, that worsened his health.

Unlike other solicitors, who always drove smart cars and liked to be neatly turned out, Roderick was quite happy to arrive in old bangers with all his legal papers in plastic carrier bags. We all called him "Rumpole", as he was so much like Mortimer's character. In one celebrated case, which Roderick confirmed to me as being true, he represented one of his "regulars", on affray or similar charges relating to a Friday night incident in Halesworth. In offering mitigating circumstances, Roderick said that his client was merely a country boy who had become overcome by the bright lights of Halesworth! The bench swallowed this hook, line and sinker, and let the defendant off with a mere slap on the wrists. Roderick was a very wily operator in the court room.

I must have been the last person, other than his own family, to see him alive. On the night in question, I popped round to his house in response to a telephone call I had had from him earlier that day. He was acting for me in relation to the granting of leases to two mobile telephone companies. We had just agreed the interpretation of a covenant in the leases, whereupon Roderick suggested that we retire to The Anchor pub. Roderick, not being a well man, only drank coffee. On leaving the pub, he insisted on going to the backroom to say, "good-bye", to one of his sons. In hindsight, it seems as though he had a premonition. He then went home and watched a video with his youngest daughter, and went out like a light while changing for bed at 2.00 a.m. after having just shouted, "good night!".

It seems very apt that Roderick should have spent his last evening in what had been his grandparents' pub about 70 years beforehand. He left a first and a second wife together with six children. Of the two daughters, one is a barrister and the other is a law undergraduate. His funeral at Walberswick church was packed with people flying in from overseas. Also present was the managing director of Durrants, Mr. Graves. He had extensive dealings with Durrants not only as a conveyancer, but also as an antique dealer. He used to attend most of Durrants' Friday auctions in Beccles. As an 11 year old, he had been broken the nose of Charles Durrant in a fight at prep school at Eversley School, Southwold. Charlie Durrant and Roderick went on to become life-long friends. Charlie did not go to Fram, but even so is now Durrants' chief auctioneer. I had to inform him of Roderick's death, as I first heard of it from Roderick's eldest son, Nathan, just as I was about to leave for a Durrants' property auction.

|