Green warrior who helped put out Hendrix fire
HELPING extinguish the blaze which cut short Jimi Hendrix’s last ever performance, coming under fire after stealing a boat from the Norwegian army and drawing up the emergency plan for a nuclear attack on Manchester.
They’re just some of remarkable episodes in the colourful life of farmer and environmentalist Walter Lloyd, who has died aged 93.
Born in 1924 in the village of Zennor in West Cornwall, Walter spent much of his life on his family farm in Shawforth.
A student at Cambridge University, until the outbreak of the Second World War interrupted his studies and he was enlisted into the Royal Navy as an Ordinary Seaman.
He served off the Normandy beaches during D-Day, sailed on the Arctic Convoys, for which last year he received a medal from Russian president Vladimir Putin, and was later commissioned as a Sub-Lieutenant and served on minesweepers in Burma and Malaya.
A few days after the Nazis surrendered Walter’s ship was at anchor in a Norwegian harbour when he and a friend decided to steal the German Commandant’s boat.
They rowed across to it in the early morning, cast off the mooring ropes, and were half way back to their vessel when the Norwegian army opened fire on them.
It turned out the Germans had stolen it from the Norwegians in the first place and they wanted it back.
Folllowing the war he returned to Cambridge University to take an MA in agriculture.
He married his first wife, Vivienne, and started livestock farming on Duckworth farm, 1,000ft above sea level on the hills above Shawforth.
He tried, and mostly failed, to make a living with sheep, pigs and dairy cattle and brought the very first tractor and silage machine into the Whitworth valley.
In 1966 he took a job with Rochdale council as a civil defence officer, and was later appointed emergency planning officer for Greater Manchester Council,
His role involved him drawing up contingency plans for disasters such as an explosion at the chemical works at Runcorn, a plane crash in the city centre and, this being the height of the Cold War, a nuclear bomb attack on Manchester.
In 1968 following the disbandment of the Civil Defence Corps, Walter founded the National Voluntary Civil Aid Services, known as Civil Aid,
The role took to him all over the world. He worked in Belfast at the height of the Troubles and visited Trinidad on a number of occasions to study hurricane disaster relief.
And it also gave him ringside seat at the birth of the British music festival, because in the early days of the often chaotic, hippy-run events there was a serious need for emergency feeding, first aid and good communications.
He went to the first Glastonbury Festival in 1970 -then known as the Pilton Festival - and provided welfare services for the Deeply Vale festivals in Rochdale.
But perhaps his biggest claim to fame was being at the side of the stage during Jimi Hendrix’s legendary headline show in front of 600,000 people at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival - the guitarist’s last major performance before his untimely death just a few weeks later.
Walter’s son Bill said: “Walter was on the stage, watching the show from the side, and observing how to manage the welfare needs of a crowd of half a million people. He was on the stage when Jimi Hendrix came on, about an hour late. It is part of pop music mythology that Hendrix’ guitar playing was so hot that the stage caught fire. The official version is that ‘someone threw a flare onto the roof,’ but Walter was there – he saw it happen and he had the full story. According to Walter, Jimi Hendrix was scheduled to play for an hour, but everyone was having such a good time that he would not stop playing, and they could not get him off stage. After nearly two hours, in desperation, the stage manager personally started the fire. The stage had to be evacuated, Jimi Hendrix was dragged off, and Walter helped to put the fire out.”
In the early 80s Walter, a father of six and stepfather of two, took early retirement from the council and dedicated the rest of his life to environmental issues and alternative technologies.
Following the breakdown of his second marriage to Gill Barron in 1987, he left the farm in Shawforth after almost 40 years, and moved to the Lake District.
There he joined the New Woodmanship Trust, which aimed to re-establish commercial charcoal burning in the South Lakes. He moved his camp from one woodland to another for several years and became engrossed in small woodland management while setting up a thriving willow growing business.
Although not from Gypsy heritage, Walter was also proud to be associated with Gypsy people all his life.
He helped revive a number of Gypsy horse fairs after joining the Gypsy Lore Society in 1949, and he first went to Appleby Fair in 1958.
He built the first of five bow top wagons in 1977 and for 30 years, up until the age of 90, would sleep in his own bow-top every night in of the year.
About 250 mourners attended his funeral at St Mary’s Church in Staveley-in-Cartmel.
Bill, a Lake Districtbased folk musician, said: “What drove him? He did not need stimulants, apart from lots of black coffee and a drop of Trinidad rum. He relied on his energy, his curiosity, and a thirst for first-hand knowledge. He always wanted to know what was around the next corner, and if he did not have the knowledge, he would find out. He was lucky to have a hardy constitution, an extraordinary memory and a stubborn personality. He had an insatiable appetite for reading, and a complete disregard for creature comforts. He took a lot of risks, but he managed to survive without serious injury. He would be the first to admit that he was a lucky man.
“Many heart-felt tributes have come in since the old man died, many of them from people I have never met and never even heard of.
“He touched many lives, and all those who knew him will feel poorer without him.”