Borough Market in London is as we speak a thriving market and well-liked place to eat – George Nicholson, who has died aged 79, was chair of its board of trustees for 10 years till 2006, and, as such, contributed a lot to that success. He liked the place; he and I ate there collectively, as pals, on his final birthday.
George was pleased with being a Londoner and his sense of civic pleasure and dedication to London continued all his life. In 1981 he was elected because the Labour member for Bermondsey of the Greater London council. He grew to become chair of the GLC planning committee, advocating for Thames seashores, social housing, one of the best of urbanism and celebration of the attainable.
George performed a pivotal function within the buy by Coin Street Community Builders in 1984 of a 13-acre derelict website on the South Bank that has since been developed right into a thriving neighbourhood of houses, parks and gardens, retailers and companies, and a household and kids’s centre. He served on its board till very not too long ago.
He was born in Dulwich, in south London. His dad and mom, Nancy (nee Martel) and Nick, have been each lecturers, and throughout the second world warfare moved the household out to Beacon Hill in Surrey. From Beacon Hill main faculty, George progressed to the naval coaching ship faculty Mercury on the River Hamble in Hampshire.
He then joined the Blue Funnel transport line in Liverpool as an apprentice, certified as a ship’s engineer and made a primary voyage to Shanghai. He by no means misplaced his love of the ocean. After service provider navy expertise, he returned to London within the early Seventies, and attended Borough Polytechnic (now South Bank University), acquiring a diploma in constructing companies, heating and air flow. He additionally joined the Labour social gathering and have become a neighborhood activist earlier than being elected to the GLC.
George was a gifted photographer. Black and white was his speciality and featured strikingly in his 2005 publication Made in Southwark: A Photographic Celebration of the Hand, about native craftspeople, and The Borough Market Cook Books of 2005 and 2007.
George took each alternative to trumpet the belongings of his neighbourhood, from the gardens of Southwark Cathedral, which he helped have a tendency whereas residing close by in Copperfield Street from the Seventies onwards, to the majesty of the Thames. But his pursuits have been world; the market networks he established in France, the place he loved a house in Gez together with his associate, Julia Smith, survive to this present day; and the Kolkata waterfront park, opened in 1999 on the banks of the Ganges, is an affidavit to partnerships with the West Bengal government developed in his function as chair of the London Rivers Association, 1987-2008.
George is survived by Julia (whom he met in 1981 in County Hall, the place she labored for the Inner London Education Authority and as head of the workplace of the chief and deputy chief), and his sister, Ann.
