WARTIME friends of a retired accountant who died alone in a seaside flat will remember him at a special funeral in Radcliffe this month.

John Woods, whose father Frank Unsworth Woods was headmaster of Bury High School, had not been seen by friends for more than 20 years.

Sussex Police entered his flat in Hastings to find that he had died of a thrombosis, with an open bible at his bedside. He had been suffering from cancer.

The coroner for Hastings and Rother traced him to his birthplace after police discovered a letter from Bury in the flat. It had been written 10 years before by Bury stockbroker Derek Calrow, a childhood school friend of John Woods in 1946 at the kindergarten of Bury Grammar School.

“I had been writing to try and keep in touch with him,” said Mr Calrow.

“It now seems I was the only friend who could be traced. The coroner is still hoping that he might find someone who knows whether John’s sister Barbara, who was born in 1935, is still alive.”

The family lived in Parliament Street, Bury, and later in Holcombe Brook. No other relatives have been traced. It has been arranged for Mr Woods’ body to be brought to Bury for a funeral at Radcliffe crematorium on September 24.