Last updated 05:41, Friday, 05 September 2008

As foreman mechanic at the Cumberland County Council Fire Service workshop in Dalston, Duncan Cottam made his considerable mark as a hard but fair taskmaster who would never ask someone to do a job that he could not do himself.

Duncan Cottam: Won many trophies playing darts

This earned him great respect and not a little affection and so, when he was about to retire, his colleagues decided that a practical joke was the best way of getting their own back, for once.

It was Carlisle Great Fair Week and they arranged for him to be called out to a repair job on a fire engine that had broken down in the Greenmarket and he duly arrived, in his “tatty” overalls and his familiar spectacles held together with Sellotape.

He was muttering darkly about the stupidity of taking the engine to that particular spot and then allowing it to break down – and then he suddenly realised what was going on.

The fire engine had not broken down. In fact, it had never, ever turned a wheel – because it was a painted board and plywood mock-up used in the fair celebrations and it was surrounded by the entire ‘watch’ of firemen on duty, who were there to give him his retirement present.

He appreciated the joke!

Mr Cottam was very well known, not only in the fire service in which he worked for 35 years but as a darts player and as a darts team organiser.

He was captain of the Carlisle United Supporters’ Club team in 1972 and he was closely involved in the game at the Cumberland Wrestlers’ pub, Carlisle Liberal Club, the Ship Inn at Thursby and the Wheatsheaf in Abbeytown. And the teams in which he played or which he ran won many trophies.

Richard Duncan Cottam, to give him his full title, was born at Crag Bank, Carnforth, where his father worked on the railway.

When a job transfer brought the family to Carlisle they lived in Gretna and this meant a daily cycle ride to and from work for his father. Hearing about the situation, Carlisle’s housing officer was very ready to help and quickly found the family a house in Currock, where they lived before moving to Botcherby.

Young Duncan, as a result, always called himself a Botcherby boy.

He was educated at the Creighton School and sang in the choir at St John’s Church, on London Road.

When he was 18 he joined the wartime RAF and was away from home for most of the next five years, serving in Aden, Palestine and on Socotra Island close to the country that is now Yemen and in Cairo.

When he eventually returned to civilian life, he went to work for the Myers and Bowman company, in Carlisle, where he served his time as an apprentice, repairing Commer trucks and going out to Shap with repair and rescue vehicles in all weathers.

He later went into the garage business on Kingstown Road, where the Car Phone Warehouse premises are today before joining the county fire service workshop in Dalston in 1952.

He began work there as a mechanic and, by the time he retired, 35 years later, he had been the foreman in charge for a considerable time.

His job was focused on keeping the county’s fire engines in the best possible condition but at one time he also had another role, driving the water bowsers that followed the fire engines in the days before they carried their own supplies.

At this stage in his life he also had a part-time job, as a driving instructor with Brown Brothers in Carlisle.

He also served in the Civil Defence corps, at Dalston.

He married Becca Spence, a Carlisle girl from Newtown Road, in 1945 and they had a caravan at Silloth, where they were frequent visitors and had very many friends. She died in 1998.

Mr Cottam, who was 85 when he died suddenly at home, lived in the same Mardale Road house for 55 years.

He leaves his daughter, two granddaughters, two great-grandsons, his sister and twin brothers.

George Hudson and Sons made the arrangements for his funeral, at Carlisle Crematorium.