A much respected and well-loved stalwart of the Maidstone community has died.

A funeral will be held next week for Donald (Don) Esland who passed away on December 19.

Mr Esland was born at Bockingford Mill Cottages in the Loose Valley on July 5, 1935.

He was the second youngest of the five children of Ellen and William Esland.

When he was just two years old, his father died suddenly, leaving his mother to raise the children with the support of her in-laws who lived next door.

Mr Esland's mother could not bear to be separated from her children, so they were not evacuated during the Second World War as many were.

Instead, they were left to grow up in the Loose Valley, which was an ideal childhood for Mr Esland, who as a boy loved playing in the stream, climbing trees, building camps and sliding down steep, snow-covered fields in winter.

While a pupil at Loose School, he took his turn at being the enemy plane spotter, sitting in the school playground and ringing the school’s hand bell to warn of approaching aircraft, enabling everyone to get to the shelters.

He also worked for a local baker, helping to deliver bread and cakes in Loose, and did his fair share of fruit-picking and hop-picking as a youngster.

Leaving school at 15, he worked first on a local farm and then as a painter and decorator.

In 1953, he was called up for National Service and did his two years in the Army. He must have enjoyed it because he signed on for a third year and was promoted to Corporal.

He was put in charge of the stores and supplies at a barracks in Germany, an experience that served him well later in his later business career.

After being demobbed, he trained as a barber and soon was running his own barber’s shop in Willington Street, Maidstone.

In the 1960s, he expanded to running a newsagent’s and a barber’s on The Broadway in Maidstone with his business partner the late Ted Palmer, who later worked for many years at Ali Barbers hairdressers in Cripple Street.

In the 1970s, the town centre premises were demolished to make way for the new Maidstone Bridge so Mr Esland opened a greengrocer’s shop on the new shopping parade in Senacre.

Finally in 1977, he became the sub-postmaster at Tovil Post Office and newsagent’s in Church Street, where he stayed until retirement in 1998. The business was afterwards taken over by his daughter and son-in-law, Debbie and Mike Bull, who ran it until November 2005.

Mr Esland married Ruby Finch in 1957.

They had met while Ruby was helping on the Girl Guides’ stall at the local summer fete. She was a shop assistant in Blake's department store in Maidstone High Street.

Living first with her parents, Nan and Pop Finch, in Tovil, the couple had a stroke of luck when Mr Esland won £500 on the football pools – around £10,000 in today's money – enabling them to buy a house in Plains Avenue, Maidstone, where their two daughters, Karen and Debbie, were born.

His daughters both said they remembered their Dad with much affection, recounting how he would give them little-boy haircuts when they were young, and how he would take them on days out to Hastings, driving at speed over the hump-backed bridge in Staplehurst on the way home to make them squeal.

When Mr Esland's business took him back to Tovil to run the Post Office, he and Ruby became key figures in a group that campaigned to save St Stephen's Church from demolition.

They were unsuccessful, but the considerable sum of money they raised was later distributed to good causes around the village.

Ruby died from cancer in 1990 – she was only 55.

At around the same time, Sheila Weeden, who worked in Mr Esland's newsagents also lost her husband, Maurice.

Leaning on each other for support, the pair formed a close relationship that lasted the next 30 years until Mr Esland's death.

Mr Esland became a key figure in the Tovil community, serving on the parish council and becoming a governor at St Stephen's Infant School, which has since subsumed into the Archbishop Courtenay Primary.

In the year 2000, he was also one of the 20 founding members of the Valley Conservation Society, established to protect the precious Loose Valley that he so loved.

After retirement, he joined the Freemasons and also became involved in supporting a number of charities including Mercy Ships, Water Aid and the Maidstone Hospitals League of Friends.

Mr Esland lived for many years with Mrs Weeden in Burial Ground Lane in Tovil, but eight years ago they moved to Lunsford Lane in Larkfield.

Alison Chew is a former Tovil Parish Council clerk.

She said: "Don was a regular attendee at our meetings from my first days as the clerk's assistant in 1994.

"He eventually became a parish councillor himself."

She said: "He had married in St Stephen's Church, which was badly damaged in the Great Storm of 1987.

"Don became a trustee of the St Stephen's Community Association along with another prominent local businessman, Edwin Clifford.

"Don was very interested in local history and was a mine of information with an extensive library of old photographs of Tovil of which he was very proud.

"It was Don who suggested the name Albert Reed Gardens for the then new development at the base of Tovil Hill.

"This was to commemorate the founder of the Reeds Paper organisation whose factories and processing plants formed the majority of the industry in Tovil until 1984."

Bryn Cornwell is the chairman of the Valley Conservation Society.

He said: "Don played a vital role in helping found the society, which now has more than 400 members.

"He served on our executive committee for many years and continued to be a loyal supporter afterwards.

"He will be greatly missed."

Mr Esland died peacefully in Maidstone Hospital from aspiration pneumonia. He was 87.

His funeral will be at Vinters Park Crematorium on Tuesday, January 24, at 11.45am.

Mourners are invited to make donations in his memory in support of the Maidstone Hospital League of Friends, via this website.

His partner, Sheila Weeden, survives him.