A POPULAR Northumberland teacher who funded the education of children leaving his school has died, aged 97.
William Royce Ancrum – known as Roy – a former deputy headteacher at what is now Glendale Middle School in Wooler and a trustee with The Robson, Patterson and Ancrum Endowment Fund, died following a short illness.
Mr Ancrum, who lived at Wooler for 56 years, was born in Bristol, the eldest of six children and from a poor background.
He went to school in the city and aged 11, won a scholarship to its Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital Bluecoat school, where he stayed until age 18.
Mr Ancrum studied English and French at Bristol University.
After graduating, he began working as a supply and temporary teacher around the city, specialising in English and French but teaching all subjects, until the outbreak of the Second World War.
He was called up to the Royal Army Medical Corps, working as a nurse, initially based in the UK and later deployed to India. Towards the end of the conflict Mr Ancrum was transferred to the Army Education Corps, making use of his teaching skills.
After the war, he remained with the army and was eventually demobbed from Hartford camp at Bedlington. It was while there that he met Helen Bell, from the town, whom he would marry in 1947.
The couple lived at Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire, where they had three children, Judith, Dorothy and Robin.
While at Bradford, Mr Ancrum resumed his teaching work, with his first full time job at a school in Bristol before moving to an establishment in Wiltshire to teach English.
