A MEMBER of Leigh RL club's first post-war board and a prominent local businessman has died at the age of 93.

Fred Bamford, a former cotton weaver who had an insurance business in Leigh and also founded the Del Marco cleaning supplies company, died in the Royal Surrey Hospital.

He had been admitted after suffering a heart attack at his home in Godalming, where he moved to from Knutsford with his second wife, Mary.

Mrs Bamford told the Journal : "I found him unconscious - he always got up early to feed the cat and it seems he was intending to do that when he collapsed."

Centurions' president and Hilton Park stalwart Tommy Sale said of the Hilton Park pioneer: "Fred Bamford was a member of the first board after the war and served alongside Jim Hilton for five or six years from 1946. We held a minute's silence at Hilton Park in his memory."

Mr Bamford was a past president of Rotary International.

He is survived by his wife, Mary, whom he met in 1945 and married in 1970, and four daughters from his first marriage which was dissolved.