Stalwart mourned ‘He cherished his friendships and loved his family’
THE community stalwart who started Cheltenham’s first antique market has died at the age of 77.
Keen property restorer Roger Champness had been fighting cancer for the last five years.
He and his French wife Josette launched the Cheltenham Antiques Market in Suffolk Road before starting the highly-successful Acanthus store in Montpellier, selling gifts and decorative items sourced from Asia.
Cheltenham-born Mr Champness, who lived at Woodmancote, later ran Rochamp, which imported products from the Far East.
His factory at The Runnings turned items such as Japanese vases into lamps and his products – which also included lampshades – were sold to retailers such as John Lewis.
His family say he was always interested in old things and he had a minimuseum featuring a repeater rifle in his bedroom as a child, charging his relatives an entry fee to get in.
After leaving school, he served in the Army and worked as a teacher for the famous Gonzalez sherry family in Spain before a brief foray into the insurance world.
He met his wife in the Black Tulip coffee bar in Cheltenham and they had been married for 51 years.
Alongside their businesses, they transformed farm buildings in this country into holiday lets and restored an old cottage near his father-in-law’s French home town of Brive into a second home.
Mr Champness was a food and wine lover, who was a horse-racing enthusiast and devoted to a succession of dogs.
After retiring, he joined the Rotary movement and eventually received its highest accolade, a Paul Harris Fellowship. He was active in the Cheltenham North club, running a Christmas fair and creating a mile of coins in Montpellier Gardens which raised £13,000 for the movement’s anti-polio campaign.
Mr Champness also took up petanque and painting in his retirement, and was a regular letter writer to the Gloucestershire Echo.
In a tribute, his brother Ian said “he dealt stoically with his illness and rarely complained.”
He added: “The tributes that have flowed in from the many tributes all mention similar words like ‘gentle, caring and considerate.’ He cherished his friendships and loved his family. We shall all miss him dreadfully.”
Mr Champness leaves his wife Josette, brother Ian and sister Julie.
A thanksgiving service took place at St Michael and All Angels’ Church, Bishop’s Cleeve, after a private cremation.