Thomas Pitfield

Thomas Baron Pitfield (5 April 190311 November 1999) was a British polymath, primarily remembered as a composer, but also a poet, artist, engraver, calligrapher, master craftsman, furniture builder and teacher. Life He was born at 57 New Road Bolton to elderly parents whose strict Victorian values and lack of support for his creative interests led to his being withdrawn from school at 14 for a seven-year engineering apprenticeship with Hick, Hargreaves & Co. Ltd. His designs for transmission machinery for the cotton industry survive as do his ink and watercolour paintings of railway engines. Although he was essentially self-taught as a composer, he did study piano, cello and harmony at the Royal Manchester College of Music, where his teachers were Thomas Keighley, Kathleen Moorhouse, Frank Merrick and Carl Fuchs. He also received early advice on composition from Eric Fogg. and also wrote more than 260 poems. His collection The Poetry of Trees combines poetry and illustration. In 1957 he designed his house, ‘Lesser Thorns’, in Bowdon near Manchester, and made its furnishings. His autobiographical writings - including a fourth volume, Incidents from a Sixty Year Holiday Diary (1998)