Torchy

mulucaver

Member
Paul Torchy Foster has recently passed away. An avid mineral collector Torchy was a member of Pegasus and PDMHS. He spent the last 4 or 5 years in a nursing home in Stockport, his home town. He was one of last Peak District 'characters'.
 

Boy Engineer

Active member
mulucaver said:
He was one of last Peak District 'characters'.

Indeed. I didn?t know him well but could pick him out in a photograph. As an innocent 17(ish) year old I was taken along to The Stags by the ?Magpie lot?. This saw an introduction to bottled Mackeson, and to a host of other ?characters?, including of course the OP above. I remember some of them being rather intimidating, with warnings from my mentors/minders that some could bite if provoked. A ten year age difference at that stage felt enormous; having now retired it doesn?t seem so. It certainly feels as though some of the scrapes were a bit more Technicolour back then, but that?s probably been true since people developed the ability to reflect on their past.
 

Dickie

Active member
Torchy was the Eldon Hostel Warden in the 70's, when it was off the main drag in Buxton.  (Best-situated hostel in the country - over the top of a pub, next to a cafe and next to a late-night drinking hole!)
Torchy would turn up on a Friday night and often disappear for the weekend, wheeler-dealing, not necessarily all above-board allegedly!
It was rumoured he had a few tea-chests full of Blue John in a shed and had discussed mineral specimens with the Duke of Devonshire.
Being a gas fitter, he would occasionally have to go on the "snatch-back" run, repossessing gas cookers from people defaulting on their HP to the Gas Board, and then regale us with  how many times he'd got his leg over as a payment for looking the other way!
He was an avid snuff-taker for many years, possessing a wide range of brown hankies!

A loss of another real character.
 

AR

Well-known member
Does anyone have a photo of Torchy that I could use in the next PDMHS newsletter? Wacker's done an obit but it would be good to have a pic to go with it.
 

Pitlamp

Well-known member
Just for the avoidance of confusion (for anyone researching in the future) there was also a caver known as Torchy associated with the Craven Pothole Club in the early 1980s, with the initials SJ. He was involved with the Sardinia expedition around that time.
 
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