July of last year saw this certificate arrive in the post; dad was very proud to have achieved Chartered status in the Institution of Civil Engineers. As always dad was full of surprises and when we visited Anderton Boat lift the other year and stood over looking at Winnington ICI works he pointed out to Sue and I all the retaining structures that he designed for the site and all are still standing! This design work helped dad progress through to becoming Chartered.

He later went into waste water and the management of; under dad’s stewardship every pumping station in Vale Royal was renewed and refurbished and he greatly increased the capacity of the sewerage system to take surface water run off which has in turn helped many parts of Vale Royal to cope with climate change events. I visited a lot of pumping station building sites when I was a kid as he’d take me along.

He saved the best for last as when driving dad for his 2nd covid jab to the Countess of Chester the other week we opted for the M56 and when passing Frodsham and Helsby I mentioned the wetland which is now in and around where the River Weaver and Mersey meet and how varied the wildlife is there. He explained that when he first moved to Cheshire that this area was essentially an open sewer as the industrial sites and surrounding towns at the time would directly discharge straight into these rivers without treatment first. Dad went on to tell us that he’d actually been employed to design and create a sewerage system to divert this waste water to treatment plants of which he did and his work had played a major role in the cleansing of this section of water; there are many a heron out there that need to thank dad for their daily catch!