Pat Van Hear, 1929-2020

Our mother Pat Van Hear died peacefully at Roscarrack House, Falmouth on 3 August 2020, aged 91.  We are immensely grateful to all the staff at Roscarrack for their dedication, patience and love in caring for mum in the last year of her life, and in particular during the final days and hours.

Pat, née Clifton, was born in Wimbledon on 15 May 1929 to Bernard and Mona Clifton.  She doted on her grandfather, Alfred Collister, a Manxman, noted landscape water-colourist, head of Redhill, Wimbledon and Kingston Schools of Art, and a talented amateur horticulturalist.  Pat’s father Bernard was a singer and actor in West End theatre and musicals: among his numbers was ‘A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koF9T1iOKGU.  Her mother Mona also trod the boards.  So it was not surprising that Pat grew up with a love of theatre ‘in her bones’, as she used to say.

Pat met our father James Van Hear (‘Van’) at the Royal College of Art in the late 1940s, where she specialised in textiles. Her career in this field was cut short to bring up three boys, born in 1953 (Nick), 1957 (Pete) and 1964 (Simon).   In 1957, shortly before Pete was born, the couple moved from Loughborough, where Van taught art and Pat taught textiles, to Falmouth, where Van took up a post at the School of Art, and where Pat worked part-time. In the 1960s and early 1970s the couple were prominent in the art and music scene in Falmouth and around, which at the time had a strong counter-cultural edge.  (Her Cornwall connection had in fact been established earlier, because during the war-time Blitz she was evacuated to Praa Sands, and to near Penzance, where family friends and actors Harry and Sylvia Welchman lived; their daughter Pam, who later took the name Perwien, was a childhood and lifelong friend).

Pat immersed herself in Falmouth’s theatre scene from the late 1960s.  She took the lead role in George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Saint Joan’ in 1968, and subsequently worked as a stage manager, on props, sound and lighting (with her friend and colleague Paul Rowan) in the 1970s and 1980s, mainly at the Falmouth Poly, but also at the Minack and other venues.  Productions included Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, Georges Feydeau’s ‘A flea in her ear’, Eugene Ionesco’s ‘The bald prima donna’, Irving Berlin’s ‘Annie get your gun’, Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘Round and round the garden’, and many others.      

Pat and Van split up in the later 1970s, and Pat took up a job as a warden of student hostels at Falmouth Art School, while continuing her interest in theatre, and in stage lighting in particular.  Her collaboration with Paul continued until the 1990s, when they branched out into lighting for bands of various kinds – including that of Humphrey Lyttleton. She struggled with health issues in the later years of her life, but lived happily in Lister Street, Falmouth, for nearly 40 years.  Her sons Simon and Peter still live in Falmouth.

Those who wish to may make a contribution to Falmouth Poly through patvanhear.muchloved.com

Nick Van Hear, Oxford, August 2020