David Wolferstan Chanter F.C.A (M.40-45)
The Club regrets to announce the death of DAVID WOLFERSTAN CHANTER on 2nd January, 2021 and in doing so expresses its sincere condolences to David’s family and friends.
David won a Scholarship to Allhallows in 1940. He became Head of Middlemist and School Prefect in 1944 and Head Boy in 1945. He won the VIth Form prize for Mathematics in 1945 and was a member of the Debating Society and Music Club. He won his 1st XI Colours for Hockey and Cricket in 1945 and was in the Shooting VIII from 1943 – 45.
Below is an extract from the Eulogy given by his son, Christopher, at his funeral:
“Dad was born towards the end of the roaring twenties in 1927, but somehow the 20th century passed him by!
The Chanters are a North Devon family of old, but my father was born in Bristol. He was always terribly old fashioned and in many ways Edwardian in attitude, maybe it was because he was brought up by his Mother and a spinster Aunt in a house split with his maternal grandparents, and his father, a sea captain who had fought as a Midshipman at Jutland being away for almost all his childhood.
Dad excelled at prep school and his Headmaster, the thoroughly frightening R E Walker (I went there as well )! knew George Shallow and thought Allhallows would suit him. It did, Dad loved it, and it was the perfect place for him, because in 1940 in his first year, his father was killed in action in a convoy by a torpedo and all hands lost with the ship.
George Shallow set about making him busy and he rapidly gained confidence and responsibility. He captained Cricket, Hockey, the Shooting VIII and became Junior Under Officer of the CCF, and in his last year was Head of School.
Although the war was over in May 1945 in Europe, on his 18th birthday a few weeks later Dad enlisted in the Army. He went to Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot and was Commissioned into the Royal Engineers and sent to Cambridge, at Downing College, where my Great Grandfather had been fifty years earlier. He then returned to the Army and did fun things like blowing stuff up and bridge building. He met my Mother at a Tennis party and found out they had been at Kindergarten together!
He qualified as a Chartered Accountant after coming out of his 3 years in the Army and married in 1949. My Grandmother on my Mother’s side had been widowed after my maternal Grandfather has died of the long effect of war wounds received 33 years before at Passchendaele in 1917. She remarried a Stockbroker in Bristol who immediately offered Dad a partnership, including paying for membership of the Stock Exchange, a hefty sum in 1958.
The firm was very old fashioned, fires blazed in the grates, clerks sat at high desks, women came in to clean the brass stair treads and doorhandles and light the fires before business every day, everything was written in long hand, but it was successful. Dad told a wonderful story of how a man in a bowler hat came up the stairs one day and proffered an apology because “one of the secretaries had said OK on the telephone just now”! Dad was like that, sloppy English was corrected in speech and on paper, politeness could never be underestimated, it is a good thing he retired thirty two years ago, I don’t think he could have tolerated modern manners! He became the last Chairman of the Bristol Stock Exchange in the 1970’s until it was absorbed into the London Stock Exchange in 1989. He then retired. He played tennis all his life until the age of 84, he lunched every working day at his Club, the Constitutional in Bristol, and my Mother looked after him like a long suffering housekeeper in some far off pre war novel! They moved from Clifton to Abbots Leigh in 1989 and my Mother died there in 2012, Dad went to live in Clevedon overlooking the sea, where food and laundry were provided with hot and cold running water, and had a pleasant life alone until dementia took over a few years ago. He moved to a specialist home a long way away near my sister in Oxford and died there wonderfully looked after, still in a tweed jacket, pressed trousers, a collar and tie and immaculately shaved by the staff. Part of a bygone era, like the school he loved has gone. He left many bequests including to the OH CLUB, Downing College Cambridge, several Churches and half a Charities Charities across the West Country.”
The photograph below shows the School Prefects, George Shallow (and dog) from 1944. David is standing in the back row, second in from the left.
