The Birth and Death of Mr P A D Sheppard

From the Barnet Press, 12 January 1974

The funeral of Mr Philip Anthony Dwight Shepaprd, of Athenaeum Road, Whetstone, took place in St Mary Bathwick Church, Bath Somerset, yesterday, Thursday. He died at his home last Thursday aged 53.

Mr Sheppard, whose family moved from Swansea to Bath when he was three, was educated at Christ's Hosptial, Sussex. He joined the RAF as an apprentice in 1937 and during the war he was commissioned as an officer and was responsible for maintaining electrical equipment. he served in different parts of England and in Nigeria.*

After leaving the RAF, he opened a club in Bath. He became the Young Conservatives' organiser for the south-west but left the post to join the Barnstaple Repertory Company. He went on from this to form his own repertory company.

In 1955 he married his wife, Mrs Sally Sheppard, who is a milliner, property maker and designer. They moved to Whetstone in 1963.

Mr Sheppard appeared in a Blackppol prodution of "The Blue Lamp" with Jack Warner and in "Maigret" with Rupert Davis in the West End. He did a lot of television work including commercials and "Z Cars". Recently he appeared in the Danny la Rue Film "Our Miss Fred" and played Mr Knibbles in a Children's Film Foundation production that has won a number of awards.

Mr Sheppard is survived by his widow and two children, Philip and Carolyn."

* I have two albums of photographs from those days in Nigeria. He brought back two native knives too, which I donated to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge.

This is from a newspaper cutting, and in the same envelope is the following announcement (newspaper unidentified):

SHEPPARD - on 29th January 1920, to Mr and Mrs P N F Sheppard, 86 Eaton-grove, Swansea, a son.