A MUSICIAN and teacher who ran a Saturday music centre in York has died aged 86.

David Lloyd had Parkinson’s and passed away in York Hospital.

Mr Lloyd was born in Norbury, in 1930, to bluestocking mother Betty Cornforth and Fleet Street journalist Frank Lloyd.

He grew up with his siblings Nick and Brenda, and some of his favourite childhood memories came during his evacuation to the village of Spetisbury, near Blandford Forum in Dorset, in the 1940s.

He first became interested in music when he was inspired by Benny Goodman - the King of Swing - and began playing the clarinet aged 14.

When he was called up for national service he became a bandsman, and his love of marching music was later evident in his own teaching.

He left the military and won a scholarship to Trinity College of Music in Marylebone.

Mr Lloyd met Betty Lower at a dance and they married in 1952.

His wife supported the couple as a teacher, before a move to Dublin in 1957 when their daughter Alison was one.

Ben and Frances, the couple’s other children, were both born in Ireland.

Mr Lloyd took a job at the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra and ran recorder groups for children in his sitting room.

Gardening was Mr Lloyd’s biggest hobby outside of music and he famously maintained five compost heaps to the end. In 1967 the family moved to Tadcaster and stayed in the same home for the next 50 years.

Alison, his daughter, said: “A loving and encouraging father and a humanist by nature he always allowed us to make up our own minds about life.” He is survived by his wife, children, nine grandchildren and two great grandchildren.