ALAN PRICE
Died 25 April 2026, aged 97
By his daughter, Judith Gunn
On a warm day in May, aged eleven, my father took a short walk in the grounds of the hospital where he was being treated for tuberculosis. From there, he could see Margate Pier, the sea, and the boats — countless boats.
It was May 1940, and the men were coming back from Dunkirk.
My father was the only child left in the hospital. The others had either been taken home or sent to North Wales because my grandfather had not been able to find the petrol to drive my dad back to South London. So the soldiers in the hospital, mainly walking wounded, taught my father how to play poker over afternoon tea.
At that time, children in hospital received no formal education, and my father, who had spent almost a year in Margate, did not pass his eleven-plus. Instead of going to grammar school, he attended Redhill Technical College. His prospects were supposedly curtailed, but his talent for maths and engineering was not to be contained. He found a place at Brixton School of Building and trained as a Chartered Surveyor, Structural Engineer, and Civil Engineer. He achieved all this in between National Service, getting married, and having a baby (me), while much of that training was completed through evening classes.
An engineer can travel, so we set sail for what was then Tanganyika, where my father became Chief Engineer for the Dodoma Region, working directly for the Public Works Department. During our stay, Tanganyika became Tanzania, and Julius Nyerere became its president. He planned to make Dodoma the capital, which it now is. After three amazing years in Tanzania, which saw the birth of my brother, we returned to Gloucestershire, to Upton St Leonards, where Dad worked for Gloucestershire County Council.
He told me that he once programmed an early computer there to say “What?” to anyone who used it next.
But he was an engineer with itchy feet, and some of the companies he most wanted to work for would not consider him because he did not have a university degree. He had HND qualifications and so did not tick that box.
We set sail again, this time to Australia on the Achille Lauro, and lived in Darwin for three more remarkable years. We made lifelong friends, and I got to camp in the outback and swim in the rivers before the crocodiles came back.
We returned to Painswick in 1972, and Dad went back to work for Gloucestershire County Council. But in 1976, my father and his friend set up their company, O’Brien & Price, a structural engineering practice that still thrives today in Cheltenham and Stroud. Any number of buildings in Gloucestershire and Stroud — from what is now Ecotricity, to the Brunel Mall, to schools, churches, and individual houses, even Fuller’s Brewery in Chiswick — stand because of him.
He had no fear of heights. He climbed mountains in his youth and walked across the Severn Bridge during his career. He clambered up ladders and onto roofs throughout most of his working life. I think he slowed down a bit in his eighties, but he worked until he was eighty-nine, and then he turned to making violins.
He was Chair of the South West Region of the Institution of Structural Engineers, which called him “a fantastic engineer” in its letter of condolence to my mother. He was also a long-standing member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Alongside this, his lifelong love of classical music — which took him to the BBC Proms during the Blitz — led him to become an integral part of the Painswick Music Society, programming many artists and events for Painswick’s musical life.
So when you cross the Severn at Gloucester or explore the Roman ruins beneath that city — or, for that matter, when you drive through the Euston Underpass in London, one of his first jobs — be glad that he was, indeed, a fantastic engineer.
