One of Gunnislake’s best known residents, Peter John Wills, has passed away after a long illness.

A colourful character around the village in the past, Peter Wills passed peacefully away at his home at the age of 89.

Peter was born in Kingsbridge and, as a young boy, lived with his parents, Olive and Bert Wills, in the nearby coastal village of Slapton.

Peter was still a young boy during the last World War but remembered the time when every household in Slapton and surrounding villages were summonsed to a compulsory meeting at which they were told they had to vacate their homes immediately to house British and American soldiers who needed to use Slapton Sands as a training area for the D Days landings.

At the time no-one realised when they were given the orders that they would not be allowed back into their homes for many years. In fact, when Peter’s parents were allowed to return to their home after the war, they hardly recognised it.

Peter and his mother moved to a house in Torquay during the war years as his father had been an active serviceman with the RAF serving at home and abroad.

When the war was over, Peter’s parents decided to stay in Torquay and he attended local schools. When he reached the tender age of 15 he took his first job as a ‘rewind boy’ at the Tudor Cinema in St Marychurch for the princely sum of £1-15-0d a week.

But Peter’s parents were not happy with the long and complicated hours he had to work so, after six months, he gained an apprenticeship for a firm which supplied musical instruments. It was a move which also started his passionate love for music.

When the owner sold the business, Peter joined the domestic rentals firm of DER and was responsible for servicing and repairing all kinds of electrical equipment in an area that stretched across Devon.

He stayed with the company for two years before gaining a challenging position as an electronic laboratory technician at the South Devon Technical College in Torquay where he was to remain for nearly 25 years. He specialised as an audio visual aids technician and was responsible for all the maintenance work throughout the college.

It was while he was at the college that Peter helped to form the South Devon Tape Recording Club which attracted enormous interest and membership.

He also took an evening job at the Torquay Telephone Exchange and often remembered with a smile the numerous requests he had to connect people around the country, many of which were quite complicated in those early years.

Peter never lost his love for electronics or music and was ‘encouraged’ to move to Cornwall in 2006 to be close to his friend, Paul Corin, who ran Magnificent Music Machines from his home on the outskirts of Liskeard.

Paul closed the business in 2012 but still carries on with his business of the restoration of player pianos and organs and his hall of fame is used as a unique wedding venue. The Organ Room still retains the wonderful 1929 Mighty Wurlitzer Theatre Pipe Organ from what was Brighton’s most famous cinema, The Regent.

As a lover of classical music, Peter travelled all over Cornwall and the UK to attend organ concerts and was proud of the fact that he attended every performance of his idol entertainer, Ken Dodd.

Up until his illness some five years ago, Peter was a familiar figure at whist drives at Tavistock and Gunnislake and a popular regular supporter of the Gunnislake Coffee Mornings.

During the past three years he has spent a considerable time in hospitals and care communities around the county but thankfully had returned to his home in Gunnislake where he peacefully passed away on last wTuesday at the age of 89.

His funeral will be at Slapton Parish Church.