Because of the store of knowledge of local matters carried in his head, I have always thought Gordon Clitheroe must be Pickering born and bred.

In fact, he was born in York, but his father died in 1943, when he was only two. His mother remarried, and they came to live at Pickering, when Gordon would be about four. You can count him as Pickering-bred.

At age 15, on leaving the Church School in Hallgarth, he went to be trained as a plumber with Mr Pickering, whose workplace was in Eastgate, where the Indian restaurant now stands.

He liked the work well enough, but would have preferred to be out of doors. From Boy Scout days onwards, he had loved being in the country, with friends, especially up on the moors with a camera to record items of historical or artistic interest.

As a grown man, he often went in the evenings to a pub now only a name - the White Horse Inn, in Burgate. It was there that a chance meeting took place with John Rushton, organiser and history tutor for the local WEA.

Somehow, they got talking. Gordon's interest in local history was strengthened and presently the association led, when Gordon was about 22, to his being involved with John in the display of an exhibition of local history at the Memorial Hall. That exhibition aroused so much interest in Pickering that the idea was born of a museum for the town.

It happened that Dr Murphy had just died. For the last years of his life, he had occupied only the ground floor of his home in Beck Isle, the house by the beck, where he had practised. The rest of it had been divided into two flats. The ground floor now became available to rent. A handful of enthusiasts managed to collect enough funds. An informal committee elected itself, and thus Beck Isle Museum and Arts Centre was launched.

I remember my husband and I visiting it from Whitby, and finding a rather slender display, and what seemed a somewhat irrelevant film, about the Polish Cavalry. We wondered whether the enterprise would thrive.

It didn't. In the first year or so, the enthusiasts nearly gave up. They didn't make enough to be sure of paying the rent.

A meeting was held at the Memorial Hall to close it down. Someone at the meeting advised them to form a trust. If four trustees would, each of them, guarantee a quarter's rent, it might save them for another year. A trust was duly formed, with a new management committee. John Rushton was appointed as curator and Gordon as treasurer. From then on, the venture flourished and has grown and grown, eventually becoming a registered charity.

It was lucky that, after a few years, the occupants of the upstairs flats found other accommodation, allowing the museum to spread upwards. And, presently, a grant enabled the trustees to buy the house, though that seemed at first a mixed blessing, as it was riddled with dry rot! Once, a showcase fell through the floor, and the doors had to close two weeks early.

During all this time, the 1960s and 70s, work at the museum, however absorbing to Gordon, was only a spare-time interest. After all, he had his living to get. In 1976, he had married a local girl and had two children. They went to live in Lockton, not so handy for the museum, or indeed for his work.

In his early days as a plumber, he had worked for Ryedale Homes, the firm of builders. His next job still had, though less directly, a connection with plumbing. It was as inspector for Ryedale Joint Waterboard - eventually to become Yorkshire Water. By 1973, he had been appointed assistant superintendent, and the following year superintendent, for the Malton area, which also included Pickering and, in 1980, the Easingwold area. He had gangs of workmen under his control to send out all over the area, to maintain the water distribution network.

At the start, he had somewhat missed the practical character of his original job, and would always have preferred something more out of doors. But he was content enough for over 32 years. Then, in 1999, as for so many people, came "reorganisation", and ever-increasing paper work made him glad to seize the opportunity of early retirement, brought about by redundancy.

But he has never lost his strong interest in the Beck Isle Museum.

In the late 70s, he had followed John Rushton as curator of the museum. Since the death of Paul Glew, he has found himself filling the role of chairman too. The two functions were always interwoven.

Several projects have been very close to his heart in the last ten years.

He has set himself to discover the names of all the people who appeared in the museum's collection of Sidney Smith's photographs. He reckons he has traced 90pc of them now. And rather than let all this information be lost when he dies, he recently decided to publish it in two books called Images of Pickering and Images of Ryedale.

Another project has been to draw more young people into the museum. Thanks to a lottery grant, it has been possible to build an education room onto the original museum, with a store room above, a shed for the collection of farm wagons, and toilets for the public. The museum can offer school parties a day's experience in bygone times, and runs a Junior Friends' Club, about 100 strong, who come to do craft work with voluntary helpers.

Beck Isle is entirely staffed by volunteers, currently 120 of them. Gordon spends hours of enjoyable time with them, not only when open to the public, but most mornings of the winter too.

It seems to me quite appropriate that he and his wife have come to live now beside the old mill race that once worked the water wheel of Viver's Mill, in a cottage adapted from an old barn. Were not his working days always connected with water, and his keenest interest with bygone days in Pickering and the country around?

Dorothy Cowlin

Updated: 11:19 Thursday, March 14, 2002