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FAMILY and friends packed St Nicholas’ Church in the town centre yesterday (Wednesday) to see off Newbury’s longest-serving licensee.
Fellow publicans and figures from the horse racing world were among mourners who watched Ivan ‘Gilly’ Topley’s last journey as the hearse arrived being pulled, appropriately, by black-plumed horses.
His widow Dorothy told how Mr Topley, of the Nags Head in Bartholomew Street, had “slipped out” one last time.
Only this time he had gone further than the ‘bookies’ or the nearby Dolphin pub.
Mr Topley, known everywhere as Gilly, was taken ill suddenly on Monday, December 17, and died the following evening at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading.
His passing marked the end of an era for Newbury.
Mrs Topley told mourners: “We had been together for 40 years and he was my soulmate, my lover and my friend.”
He was, she said, a “proud, honest, hard-working man.”
She went on to speak movingly of Mr Topley’s devotion to his family and friends, his zest for life, the occasional vodka and a passion for horse racing.
His eldest son Alexander paid tribute to the man who taught him how to have fun and to “laugh at yourself before laughing at others.”
Mr Topley had lived in the town for 57 years and leaves a wife, former town magistrate Dorothy, two sons, Lester and Alexexander, a daughter, Lisa and grandchildren. |
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