My father, Derek Philpott, who has died aged 89, had a long career in electronic engineering and a later passion for community history, leading him to create the website Openshaw Memories and publish a photo-book, Memories of an Openshaw Childhood in the 1940s and 50s (2023).
After studying for a BA in history at the Open University (2002), Derek was determined to record the everyday history of industrial Manchester and preserve the connections that led back to his boyhood. The website, which he set up in 2015, enabled former residents to share recollections, photographs and personal histories, and to reconnect with people they had known at school or in childhood. It also reflected his belief in the historical importance of “ordinary” lives and collective memory.
He was born in Openshaw, in what is now Greater Manchester, to Douglas, a coal stoker on the railways, and his wife, Annie (nee Burns), a mill weaver then shop assistant. He lived there until his 20s in a two-up two-down redbrick terrace house, also with his brother John, beside a steamhammer forge, which shook the building every 10 seconds, although he said the family “only noticed when it stopped”. At that time, Openshaw was considered one of the most heavily industrialised suburbs in Europe.
Derek often spoke of his childhood with an outside toilet, no heating and a weekly bath in front of the fire, and was nostalgic about the vibrant community spirit forged through the shared, closely lived lives of his neighbourhood.
After attending Manchester Central grammar school he did his national service in the RAF in northern Scotland, where he received electronics training. Once demobbed, he studied engineering at Birmingham University, but the commute from home became too difficult and costly, and he left after a year. He later got an HND in electronic engineering through evening classes, while working for Ferranti in Manchester in the late 1950s. He then worked in sales and international sales management for the international electronics company Tektronix for the next 26 years.
At the beginning of his time with Tektronix, Derek lived and worked in St Peter Port, Guernsey. It was there that he met Dieuwke Dijkstra, a teacher from Friesland in the Netherlands, and they married in 1967. As they moved about for his work they lived in several parts of the UK, and in Oregon in the US, before raising a family in Codicote, Hertfordshire.
Derek retired in 1998, and in 2010 the couple settled in Dorchester.
As well as his interest in community history, he followed politics closely throughout his life, and was a devoted reader of the Manchester Guardian and its successor for more than 70 years.
He is survived by Dieuwke, their children, Peter and me, and four grandchildren, Salvie, Seetla, Stanley and Tommy.
