A VILLAGE stalwart who served on West Hanney Parish Council for 37 years has died aged 76.

Roy Williams was a former employee of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), in Harwell, who moved from Wales to Oxfordshire in 1965.

A well-known figure around West Hanney – a village about three miles north of Wantage – he was chairman of the parish council for 32 years, until 2007.

Roy Williams was born in Burry Port, in Carmarthenshire, Wales, on July 1, 1938 to parents Dorothy and Mervyn, an electrician.

He went to grammar school in Llanelli and left after taking his O-Levels to work in the Royal Ordnance factory in Pembrey.

To advance in the factory’s laboratories he went to Liverpool to study chemistry at a further education college.

He later got a job at The Steel Company of Wales, working in the labs at its steelworks in Port Talbot, where at first tinplate production was carried out.

This was where – while ferrying colleagues in his Hillman Minx car as a member of a car-pooling scheme to work – he met his future wife, Mair Griffiths.

The pair married on October 10, 1964 in Llwynhendy, Camarthenshire, and lived with Mrs Williams’s parents in nearby Llanelli after running into problems with a builder who was delaying construction of a new home for them.

A year later Mr Williams got a job with the UKAEA in Harwell, at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, a major employer in the area.

And shortly afterwards Mrs Williams – a computer programmer – also won a job at the science facility.

This was, in part, due to the relative shortage of skilled computer programmers at the time.

They bought a house in Main Street, West Hanney, taking advantage of a support scheme for employees, and stayed there for the next five decades.

The couple did not have any children and Mr Williams retired at 60.

His hobbies included stamp collecting and he was also a regular punter at The Plough Inn, in Church Street, where he would religiously walk through the doors every night at 10.10pm.

He also played a key role for many years within the parish council, including helping to run the village shop.

Roy Williams died from cancer on November 25.

A funeral service took place at West Berkshire Crematorium on December 10.

He is survived by his wife.

 

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