also managed to find time for many other hobbies, including reading, computing, playing golf, where he was a life member of Shortlands Golf Club, his extensive sea shell collection, good food, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of RMS Titanic. Peter is survived by Viviane, their three children and by five grandchildren. OA son, Tony, contributed this obituary. Raymond Clare Gough [1937-40] 28.01.1924 – 09.03.2016 Ray Gough was born to Henry and Elsie Gough in Wallington, and was a younger brother for Keith. Both boys went to Dulwich College from the Prep and were in Raleigh. Ray enjoyed his time at Dulwich, especially team sports, rugby and cricket. He worried that he was less good at academic subjects, but his mother always confidently told him that he would do well in the end. He was only fifteen when the Second World War started, but he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve at the first opportunity. He spent some time in Yorkshire learning to fly and was then posted to America to train other pilots to fly. He was based in Arizona and remained a life member of Falcon Field Association. Towards the end of the war, his father Henry died and, as older brother Keith had become a doctor, Ray took over the family business, Gough Brothers’ grocers. When he took over the firm, there were just a handful of shops in the suburbs, which were small grocery shops which also sold wine. With the gradual spread and expansion of supermarkets, successfully running grocery shops was becoming more difficult, so the shops slowly turned into off-licences and, at the same time, more shop
sites were acquired. Throughout his business career, he worked very long hours, being in the office in Balham by 7am. In the run up to Christmas, which was always the busiest time of year, he would make a special effort and visit all his shops to offer encouragement to the managers. The cellars were moved from under the arches near London Bridge to Mitcham, and all of his children took a turn at working on the bottling line to earn some pocket money. With ongoing hard work, Gough Brothers continued to grow and became a public company in 1972. This helped to finance further trade acquisitions including the Findlater group. Gough Brothers eventually had 220 shops in total, including a restaurant and wine bar in the West End of London. With his strong commitment to the wine trade, he was elected chairman of the Wine and Spirit Trades Benevolent Society for 1978/79. The current Chief Executive of the society, David Cox, remembers my father as being closely associated with two generations of his family business, Matthew Clark and Son, who supplied Gough Brothers with Martell Cognac. One of the principal activities of the charity at that time was to own and run the sheltered housing and care home site called The Vintry in Eastbourne, where 28 retired drinks trade couples were looked after in furnished bungalows and given a monthly grant, and 20 more infirm individuals were looked after in the Vintry Care Home. He presided over a record number of 1,400 trade members attending the annual fundraising banquet at the Grosvenor House Hotel in 1979, which raised over £36,000, a very large sum in those days. Also in 1979, Ray decided to sell the business to Scottish and Newcastle Breweries, although the arrangement whereby he ran the business for
Scottish and Newcastle was relatively short-lived and he left the company in 1982. Ray thought he was too young to retire, so he started from scratch again, acquiring ‘Annabel’s Wine Cellar’ and then a further three shops under the name of ‘Andre Simon’. In 1949, Ray married his first wife, Diana Percival, and they had three children, Mary, Hilary and Nicky. This marriage was not to last and he soon met his second wife, Hilary. They moved into a large, newly built home in Reigate and lived there with Hilary’s four children: David, Carol, Jeannie and John. It proved to be an ideal house for displaying his expanding collection of paintings. Once he finally retired from business, Ray became a volunteer at the V&A museum in Kensington on their help desk for two days a week. The allotted hours at the V&A were not long, and any spare time up in London was happily spent visiting bookshops and small art galleries. In his later years, he occupied his time enjoying the company of his extended family which had grown to number eighteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren between Hilary and himself. He always found time for each and every one of them and all will have strong recollections of fun days out and holidays together. This obituary is based on the eulogy which was read at his funeral and was supplied by his eldest daughter, Mary Hagger. Peter Dorney Hart [1939-42] 24.06.1925 – 21.12.2015 Peter Hart was born in Kensington as the son and elder child of an accountant, Sydney Charles Hart (1887-1974), and Florence Jane Hart (1890-1989), nee Dorney. He came to Dulwich from St Anselm’s Preparatory School in Croydon just as the Second World War began. St
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