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Family tributes to
The Bromsgrove business community sadly lost one of its best-known characters, Peter Nokes, in December last year.
In this issue of Completely Bromsgrove , we reflect on the life of the charismatic Bromsgrove Printing founder and share family memories.
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Born in 1940, Peter, the youngest of four siblings, attended school from the age of two-and-a-half. The headmaster decided to take Peter early - the family home did not have a garden and his parents thought it would help him mix with other children.
In the 1950s Peter attended Watt Close School, where he became head boy, and after leaving school, he began a printing apprenticeship at the Bromsgrove Messenger, combined with studies at Matthew Boulton College in Birmingham. Peter joined Workman’s Printers on Worcester Road the following decade and met his future wife Sylvia, whom he married in 1968. The couple had three children, Jennifer, Susan and Richard.
After leaving Workman’s, Peter set up his own business Bromsgrove Printing, in a friend’s disused barn in Stone. From the barn, he moved to Partridges Yard in central Bromsgrove before later relocating the business to its present home on Worcester Road.
Outside work, Peter enjoyed meeting up with childhood friends and was a familiar face at The Vernon Arms and the Unionist Club. He was a Mason at the Beacon Lodge, where he became a Worshipful Master, in 1989.
In 1977 Peter was elected to represent Bromsgrove on Worcestershire County Council and he was also a member of the Court Leet, relishing his role as the Tythingman of Catshill. Peter also liked sailing and walking the Malvern Hills and Scotland’s Munro mountains. He was also a governor of Finstall First School.
Peter died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham aged 82. He will always be remembered as a well organised man. Hardworking, warm, friendly and sociable, he had a good sense of humour.
Daughter Jennifer said: ”I have many fond memories of time spent with Dad. In the early days, our special times together were on Sundays. We would scour the Worcestershire countryside looking for horses in fields to feed them sugar lumps.
