Town loses its leading historian

His funeral was held on Tuesday, January 13 in Melksham, Wiltshire.

Born in Poole in June 1932, Mr Bascombe moved to Waltham Abbey in the 1960s to undertake work for the Explosives Research and Development Establishment (ERDE) after obtaining a PhD degree at Cambridge. He previously graduated with a degree in chemistry from Balliol College, Oxford.

As an only child, Mr Bascombe's parents moved with him to Waltham Abbey, spending the rest of their lives there.

As well as excelling in his professional work, Mr Bascombe, who never married, was a keen local historian, and he served for several years as secretary and curator of Waltham Abbey Historical Society before becoming president in 1987. He served until 1998.

Over the years he amassed a library of books on his numerous interests, including architecture, history, chess and music, and he wrote a number of articles as well.

In 1974, Mr Bascombe published A Walk Round Waltham Abbey, with drawings by John Bentley, followed by Old Waltham Abbey in Pictures in 1985.

He also served as secretary of the Essex Archaeological and Historical Congress between 1977 and 1984, and was president between 1984 and 1987.

On his retirement, Mr Bascombe planned to put his years of research into a major new history of Waltham Abbey, but ill health overtook him after the death of his widowed mother and, in 1996, he moved into a care home in Warminster, Wiltshire.

Subsequently he moved into the nursing home where he died on Sunday, January 4.

Stan Newens, former MP and MEP, and current president of Waltham Abbey Historical Society, said: "It's a tragedy that he did not produce his book. To follow exchanges between Ken and Waltham Abbey's doyen archaeologist Peter Huggins, on the successive churches that have stood in the Abbey, was a rare intellectual pleasure, and it's regrettable that he did not record more of his knowledge in print."