PUB landlord and familiar face in Wantage for the last 40 years Philip Evans has died, aged 64.

“Larger than life” character Mr Evans was described as a man who had time, and a joke, for everyone he met. He lived in the area around Wantage for four decades, and was well known locally for saving The Pound pub at Goosey from closure in 1978.

Mr Evans took over The Pound and turned it into a popular eating and drinking house, with the landlord creating a ‘Deathburger’ – the pub’s signature dish for many years.

He was also a much-loved lecturer at West Oxfordshire College in Witney and had a quirky interest in snail farming.

Philip Evans was born on December 28, 1950, in South Wales to parents Tommy, a miner, and Megan Evans.

He had one sister, 76-year-old Mair Phillips and a brother, 74-year-old Lyn Evans.

As a boy he grew up in Maesteg, South Wales, and after school started working on farms, while he took his National Diploma in Agricultural Engineering at college.

He attended Pen-Coed College first, at the age of 15, followed by Usk, then a college at Auchincrieve in Scotland and finally Lackham in Wiltshire.

In 1972, aged 22, he began lecturing in motor vehicle engineering at West Oxfordshire College, where he stayed for nearly 30 years.

He married his first wife, Roz in the mid-1970s.

They had two sons, Tim in 1978 and Barry in 1981, but later divorced.

Mr Evans met his second wife Caroline when she was working as a secretary at West Oxfordshire College. They married in 1991 at Henley-on-Thames Register Office.

When The Pound eventually closed in 1990, Mr Evans and Caroline moved to Woolstone, near Uffington, where Caroline had set up a horse livery business.

Mr Evans retired from his lecturing job in 2001 after an accident the previous year when he fell from a ladder on a stack of straw, suffering a broken arm and leg and a damaged knee.

Wheelchair-bound for a short while, Mr Evans embarked on the next chapter of his life by inventing and patenting a special gatecatch for his wife, designed to make opening and closing gates easier while mounted on a horse.

He quickly started up a business manufacturing and selling the catches, travelling across Poland and China in a bid to get them made at a reasonable price.

Even now, after his death, his invention continues to sell all over the world.

Mr Evans also had a passion for farming snails and appeared in newspapers and on television, explaining his farming techniques and asking people to collect and send him snails.

He also loved dogs, and had two Irish wolfhounds named Boots and Blue, and a Labrador collie cross named Tessa.

Mr Evans died on Monday, September 21, after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

He leaves behind Caroline and sons Tim and Barry.

His funeral will take place at the new South Oxfordshire Crematorium, on the A338 Oxford to Wantage road at Garford, on Friday, October 9, at noon.

The funeral is followed by a wake at the White Horse pub in Woolstone. All are welcome.