Obituaries
times a week throughout his life and played for operatic societies, churches and even at the top of Magdalen College tower in Oxford. During his time at the College he was also in the Debating Society, a company sergeant-major in the Junior Training Corps, House Captain of Sidney, a school prefect, editor of The Alleynian and Captain of the School in his final year. After leaving Dulwich, Brian went to Merton College, Oxford, to read Jurisprudence, graduating in 1951. He started his working life at Barclays Bank in London, but soon transferred to Oxford. After only two years with the bank, he used his skills for management and organisation to join the Oxford University Registry, where he stayed for nearly 20 years, much of it as Deputy Registrar. Merton College awarded him a Professional Fellowship in 1961. He moved in 1972 to become the Estates and Finance Bursar of Corpus Christi College, remaining there until taking early retirement due to ill-health in 1989. Brian grew up near Crystal Palace and his future wife, Mary, grew up in Riddlesdown, Surrey, and went to Old Palace School in Croydon. Their grandmothers were sisters, so Brian and Mary were actually second cousins. When Brian went to Merton College, Mary also went to Oxford to train as a nurse at the John Radcliffe Infirmary. They married at All Saints in Sanderstead in 1953 but spent their first two years of married life living on a houseboat at Donnington Bridge in Oxford. They had three children, Alison, William and Anthony. Apart from all the university work, Brian also maintained links with the Royal Normal College and Academy of Music for the Blind, which his grandfather, Sir Francis Campbell, had founded in Crystal Palace in 1871. During the Second World War the College had been evacuated from its Norwood site to the Shropshire countryside and had remained there after the war. Brian was appointed as Governor and Chairman of the Finance Committee in 1972, nearly 40 years after the last Campbell family involvement in the College. He was instrumental in finding a redundant teacher training college in Hereford, which was ideal. The move to Hereford, with strong support from the Department of Education, was an outstanding success, with student numbers soon doubling to more than 200. Brian was appointed Chairman of the College in 1984, remaining in post until 1999 and retiring as a governor in 2008, whereupon he was elected as Vice President. The College remains in Hereford to this day and is now known as the Royal National College for the Blind. In addition to regular trips to Hereford, Brian and Mary were very busy in retirement. He continued to play the trumpet with the Bicester and Abingdon bands and the Cowley Orchestra, right up until only a few months before his death. He is survived and much missed by Mary, who contributed significantly to this, and by their children.
Brian Laurence Capon (1940-45) 06.10.1927 – 09.02.2015
Brian was born in Acton, the only child of Reginald, a banker. Brian was brought up in Ewell and attended Ewell Castle School before being sent to Alleyn’s School. He transferred to the College at Easter 1940 following six months as an
evacuee at Walmer Castle in Kent, which was home to the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He arrived just in time to see trainloads of Dunkirk survivors pouring up to London on the line through West Dulwich station, a memory that never left him. At the College he was in Spenser and although he started as a day boy, the difficulties of travelling during wartime meant the journey to and from home took too long, and he became a weekly boarder in Blew House. He was a Petty Officer in the Sea Cadets, learning to sail from J H P Pennington, with whom he continued to sail for many years. He was also a prefect, was in the boxing team for four years and played 1st XV rugby and 1st XI cricket in his final year. After leaving Dulwich in 1945 as the Second World War ended, he joined the Royal Navy to do his National Service. He was posted to the captain’s staff of HMS Sheffield, flagship of the American and West Indies Squadron. After a month in the Mediterranean, Sheffield crossed the Atlantic to be based in Bermuda. On board Sheffield and before demobilisation in December 1947, he visited most of the major ports and harbours in both North and South America, as well as the Caribbean, which was in marked contrast to spending the war years in south London. Having left the Navy, he worked for Shell in the City of London for 11 years before being persuaded, with one or two other OAs, to join the OCS Group, a large business owned and run by the Goodliffe family (also see Alex Hemming’s obituary on page 66). He became a director before taking early retirement in 1988, after 30 years with the company. While working at Shell he met Anne and they were married at St Columba in Pont Street, Chelsea, in September 1959, producing two children together, Alastair and Sue, who both now share his love of the sea and the lessons in seamanship learned from him on family holidays in Salcombe, Devon. Brian played 241 matches for the 1st XV of the OA Football Club, captaining the team for six years in the 1950s, and also played for Surrey. After retirement from work, Brian and Anne moved to the Chichester area, where he was a founder member of the Alleynian Sailing Society, its second Commodore and the originator of the scheme for Solent-based OAs to take boys from the College’s sailing club to sea for a week each summer to give them experience in larger boats. This initiative has endured and become the very successful Boys Sail Training Week. He also
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