Last updated 05:19, Friday, 09 May 2008

Lionel Nutley has died aged 101. The former county music adviser came to Cumberland in 1950 to work for the County Council’s Education Committee.

100 not out: Lionel Nutley, former county music adviser, teacher and examiner, who was a founder member of the Dvorak Society

The following year he founded the rural choirs movement. The idea was that small choirs meeting in farmhouse kitchens and village halls should come together once a year for a major concert.

He was an examiner for Trinity College of Music, conducted the Cumberland Symphony Orchestra and the Cumbria Guild of Singers and was also closely connected with the Cumberland Youth Orchestra.

He also served as organist and choirmaster at the Southey Street Methodist Church in Keswick.

Music always played an integral part in Mr Nutley’s life – right from the age of nine when he was signed up to join the church choir in Garstang where he lived at that time.

Aged 11 at the end of the World War One, Mr Nutley went to Lancaster Grammar School before going on to Leeds Training College to prepare for life as a teacher.

He taught in Manchester, Preston, Aldermaston and Ipswich before joining the RAF and working in bomb disposal.

He got back into music and eventually achieved his ambition of coming to a country area when the post in the old county of Cumberland came up.

He and his wife Freda, from whom he divorced after 39 years of marriage, came to Cockermouth. They had a daughter, Janice, who gained a degree at Oxford and also went on to have a career in music teaching.

Mr Nutley moved to Springs Road in Keswick in 1957 and retired 10 years later.

He had always taken an interest in Czechoslovakia since hosting a Czech student who came to Britain to further his studies, and after his retirement, he went on a course in Anglo-Czech relations at Prague University. He was a founder member of the Dvorak Society.

A member of the Derwentwater Masonic Lodge, Mr Nutley put his long life down to “moderation, moderation and moderation” and his lifelong delight in classical music.

He died peacefully on in Keswick’s Mary Hewetson Cottage Hospital and his funeral will take place on Monday at St John’s Church in Keswick.