John Pendleton 1953 - 2024

John and I had pretty idyllic childhoods. We lived in a nice bungalow with a big garden on a quiet lane on the southern edge of Coventry. Dad worked and Mum stayed at home. From the ages of seven or so we were allowed to wander more or less where we liked so the nearby woods and fields became our playground. I quickly picked up my big brother’s love of the natural world and our nature table in the old converted coal bunker was always burdened with stuff we’d found, like animal skulls, mushrooms, butterflies, moths, and sad to say, birds eggs.

 

Later, armed with catapults, we would wander much further and occasionally even found ourselves at our grandparents’ house several miles away in Burton Green.

 

Our house backed onto the garden of the Aldersleys, who were already friends of Mum and Dad. The fence at the top of the garden quickly disappeared and it became shared territory for all us kids so it was often quite boisterous and fun with games of badminton, football or competitive catapulting. All this could make Dad a bit grumpy if he was trying to have a kip in his deckchair listening to the Test Match.

 

With other kids in the area we formed a little gang with John, obviously, as the leader. I remember he once tried to train us to run down the pavement in a tight packed group like the Bash Street Kids in the Beano. We always tangled legs and just fell over in fits of laughter.

 

John is the only person I’ve heard of to be attacked by wild owls on two separate occasions. The first time was when we took two fluffy grey Tawny Owl chicks from a hole in an old oak tree in a spinney on Hearsall Golf Course. We were going to try and rear them at home but Dad soon found them in an open cardboard box we’d put in the old coal bunker and, quite rightly, made us return them to the nest. A week or so later John went back to “see how they were getting on” and one of the parent owls flew out and clung onto his face. He fell about twelve feet out of the tree and needed a night in hospital and stitch in his eyeball. Tawny Owls are notoriously aggressive but we didn’t know that at the time.

 

Much later in life John and I would very occasionally go on birdwatching forays to the Ouse Washes or Slimbridge for the day, usually between Christmas and New Year. They were good days away briefly from work and responsibility and I treasure those memories a great deal.

 

My brother was cheerful, good natured and generous and, although we bickered a bit in our teens (which siblings don’t ?) I don’t think I ever really remember him being moody or bad tempered. It just wasn’t in his nature.

 

He was fond of a practical joke, as Sid and Ricky found out in his last few days. Very brave.

 

School didn’t really agree with John, and he was sent to a couple of local private schools to try and discipline him. It didn’t work though and I remember dad being a bit miffed when he found out that although he’d been sending his school fees to the school, most mornings John had been going into Coventry to see his mates.

 

Fortunately John was a truly gifted artist who already made beautifully refined drawings of birds and animals and our Grandpa, who worked in the design office at the Triumph Motor Company, got him an interview for a 5 year apprenticeship with the graphic design firm F. Gordon Reeves. 

 

John became a hippy and his favourite piece of attire was our grandma’s old fur coat, worn inside out and with the arms cut off. His first car wasn’t a sixties banger but a 1938 Morris 8 - running boards and all - which he restored beautifully. He loved cars and had some absolute beauties over the years, perhaps the best being a 1950s Healey 3 litre which had once raced at Le Mans. 

 

The Antelope Motorcycle club was his pub of choice, although he never had a motorbike, and its there I believe he first met Christine Bench. They went out for a few years before they were married.

 

He became self employed and they soon started moving up the property ladder, starting with a red bricked terraced house in Moore St, Earlsdon. He worked very hard and Design Principles, with Christine behind the scenes, quickly did well.

 

John by now was an extremely capable illustrator and some of his paintings of falcons were sold to wealthy Arab clients by the prestigious Mathaf Gallery in Knightsbridge. They offered to send him to Saudi Arabia for a month to make studies of falconry in the desert but he was too busy to go.

 

Soon their son James and daughters, Rose and Alice arrived and he devoted himself to his family. Later of course he adored his grandchildren Archie, Bella and Poppy and I know he thought very highly of Rose’s Chris who was so good to him in his last few weeks.

 

John and Christine had several beautiful houses culminating in their spectacular house and garden here in Shropshire. His designer’s eye was obvious in the garden and I always loved the linear stone-walled pond he built at the back of the house with the help I believe of his good friend Pete. A perfectly placed old stone fireplace arch, set back and surrounded by ferns, reflects the water and gives it the feel of some sort of ancient sacred well.

 

He spared little expense on rare plants which were a real weakness and I often got WhatsApp photos of his latest Brugmansia or Himalayan Giant Lily.

 

Inside this 17th century half-timbered gem he and Chris had lovely old furniture perfectly in keeping with its ambience. He had a library room where he kept his fine collection of books on mostly natural history subjects, but also gardening and art. Despite not being extensively educated he had refined tastes and read a great deal.

 

John liked taxidermy and fortunately he soon stopped trying to do it himself and employed a professional. The cases of stuffed birds gave the interior a slightly eccentric Victorian vibe and he would pick up deceased specimens whenever he found them to add to the collection. He once famously stopped on the M40 to collect a dead Red Kite he’d seen in the central reservation and it took him nearly half an hour to run across all three carriageways of screaming traffic, bird in hand. That must have been an odd sight for drivers. 

 

Which brings me to the second owl attack. A few years ago, driving along a country lane, he saw a Barn Owl presumably hit by a passing car. As usual he picked the bird up but this time it was obviously just stunned and it sunk its fearsome upper mandible into his hand. He couldn’t get it off and, in some pain, he only eventually loosened it by banging his arm on a fence rail. I don’t remember the outcome of the story but I like to think of the recovered owl taking off and floating down a field, inadvertently saved by John. If it did no one would have been more pleased than him.

 

John, none of us who saw it will forget your bravery and good humour in your last few weeks and days. Val and I, and our son Ned, were tremendously impressed. Yours wasn’t a life without difficulties and indeed tragedy but you always bounced back. I’ve always been so proud to say you were my brother.

 

I’ve no one to tell now of the Black Kites or the Wryneck I’ve just seen in Germany, or of the rare pelargoniums and irises we’ve both been growing and sharing in recent years but I will always remember and think of you Big Bro.