RIP Matty

Sadly Alan passed away on 18th April 2026. Tributes to his life can be found at the end of the following autobiographical section.

Funeral detail:

21st May.11.30, Maldon Fields Crematorium, Maldon Road, Woodham Mortimer CM9 6SN

 

Outline CV

 

Education

 

Born :- 1936 at Cornerways, Kingsley Road, Hutton.

 

Went to Hutton C of E School in the village in 1941, where both his Father and Grandfather were educated

Passed 11 Plus Examination for entrance to Brentwood School in 1947.

Attended this School until 1952, then left to Join The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in Chelmsford as an Apprentice.

Attended Chelmsford Technical College in order to qualify as an Electrical/Electronic Engineer. Finally became a full Member of the IEE and Chartered Engineer in 1970.

Interests

Interests included hill walking and some simple rock climbing in Wales, Scotland, The Lake District and Austria.  Played semi-professional Jazz in many venues  from 1956, two, three or sometimes four nights a week. Main band was the Washboard Syncopators of which there are two recordings.

Rebuilt many motorcycles and cars. Specialised for some years in restoring Classic Motorcycles, but from about 1975 concentrated on modern high powered machines.

In 2002 still have a 1952 Vincent 500 which was bought in 1956 and is driven each year to the Isle of Man for demonstration runs round the TT course during Manx Grand Prix week. Also have a 750 cc Honda which is used to go to Air shows, vintage car events and to the Isle of Man TT Races in June.

Build and fly radio-controlled model gliders and powered aeroplanes and have also flown full sized gliders and light aircraft, but not to the extent of having a licence to fly solo.

Family

Married :- Jane Withers in 1968 who he met at a party in London. Her Father owned a small iron foundry in Mansfield Notts, which was closed down in about 1970.

Bought a house in Little Baddow and had two children - Anna in 1971 and Jonathan in 1973.

Anna now has a Doctorate in Geology and works in London as a specialist consultant on Sedimentology to British Petroleum. Jonathan follows the family tradition and is Agricultural Engineering Service Manager for E.Doe at Ulting.

Work Experience

 

Student Apprentice 1952 - 1957 at New Street and Broomfield    

 

Transferred to Staff of Radar  Development Group Broomfield in 1957 then Great Baddow in 1958.    

Worked on NATO Demonstration at Rivenhall for the 244 Heightfinder.

Swedish Fur Hat System 1959-1965

Designed the Trigger Delay and Buffer Unit, the Company’s first Digital Azimuth Encoder and upgrades to the Rotor System’s electromechanical analogue monitoring and calibration equipment for the Swedish Sector Operations Centre (Fur Hat Project).
Spent many months on site in Sweden, commissioning, de-bugging and assisting Field Services for both the original Contract and for various extensions to it.

South African Mobile Operations Vehicles (MOV) 1965-67

Helped to design and develop Control and Reporting Operational facilities for an old mobile System with type 13 and 14 Radars. The System was based on a Myriad 32K computer, had 6 consoles with tracking, intercept and tote facilities housed in a Leyland Hippo truck. Went to South Africa for Commissioning.

S600 Mobile Display Shelter - Anvil 1968-71

Team Leader for the design and development of the display System for the S600 Radar.

The shelter had 3 displays and a computer for controlling the mobile S613 Height Finder. It was shown at Farnborough in 1968 and as a result many were sold to Yugoslavia. A two-shelter version was developed for Malaysia and about 35 Anvils were eventually sold. Went to Turkey to help commission the first delivered system.

System Sales at Writtle Road 1971-75

Joined a small group who acted as technical advisers to Sales for bids and did presentations to potential Customers. Travelled extensively.

Systems Engineering Bridge/Oman 1976-77

Based at Rivenhall to assist with  S600 Mobile Systems.

Systems Engineering Swedish TOR Project 1977-83

Systems Section leader for TORH Project, based on Locus Computers.
The System provided intercept, auto tracking, 6x radar inputs, totes, and a touch MMI.
Many trips were made to Sweden during this Project.

Systems Engineering Yugoslavian BACCUS Project 1984-88

Systems Manager for the design of 2 x ADOCs and 4 x SOCs, with Multi-Head Tracking, Intercept, SAM, Flight Plan Input, G/A Data Links etc. on fixed sites.

Systems Engineering Display Group 1988-89

Worked on several D&DH Bids, mainly updates for the London Air Traffic Control Centre. Then worked on the Malaysian KAWAL Bid which provided my next big project.

Systems Engineering Malaysian KAWAL Project 1990-95

Requirement Authority for D&DH parts of system, comprising Display Shelters each with 4 x Consoles, Integration with Hughes System, Executive Operations Shelter, Training School and Software Bureau. Visited America and Malaysia several times for meetings and acceptance testing.

OSCR over the Horizon Sea Current Radar 1996

Helping to test this system during the Winter, out on the Essex Coast.

Sensors for SWMLU at Basildon 1996

Writing requirement specifications for Seawolf Mid Life Update Electro-Optic Systems

NATO SOC Replacement Bid

In Paris for three months to work with an international bid for a multi million pound contract.

JORN OTH Radar Fault Reporting Requirements 1997

Writing notes to clarify software processing for Australian over the Horizon Radar.

(RETIREMENT 1998)

 

Thoughts on Pottery Lane and Great Baddow in the 1950s

 

(by Alan Matthews)

 

Thinking about when I joined the Radar Development Group at Broomfield, I realised that there was a “them and us” divide when I went to Broomfield in 1955, "them" being the Military Development Group at Baddow.
Basically Broomfield did the Private Venture (PV) designs and Baddow the work for the Ministry – presumably cost plus.
In 1959 the TV design lab moved from Baddow to Pottery Lane and the Broomfield display group moved to their old lab at Baddow, and some to rooms A123/124, while the High Power Radar group went to a lab under the tower.

 

Baddow

They had just about completed the Rotor display equipment design for the British Defence system which involved the Type 64 Consoles with their several racks of analogue equipment.

A set of equipment had been built in room 123 (I think) at Baddow for sorting out bugs and polishing maintenance procedures and was later used for the design of the Swedish Fur Hat display system, which used Marconi Private Venture displays instead of the Type 64 Consoles. I did a lot of work on this around 1961/62 under the guidance of Cliff Clarke to make it suitable for Sweden.

The Ministry design team comprised some extremely clever and highly-qualified engineers and scientists, with the general requirement to keep within 0.1% tolerance for most parameters – sawtooth deflection linearity, etc. These tolerances were maintained with valve equipment despite valves ageing, temperature changes, etc. and used very elegant circuit designs with chopper stabilisation and feedback.
I did not work on any of this design but was most impressed with their skills when I worked with them later in 1959 at Baddow.

Here are some of the Baddow team that I remember:

Roy Simons               64 Console
David Chandler          Analogue circuit design including timebases
Arthur Young             Rotation synchro servos and probably other designs
Derek Watkins           The co-ordinate resolver which produced the fixed coil system timebases
Tom Patterson
Len Wittaker

No doubt Roy Simons would have known many others.

 

Broomfield

 

The Broomfield display system under Peter Max had a completely different design team, though they were meeting a very similar design requirement to the Baddow Group and I never understood why the Ministry design from Baddow was not used as a basis. Perhaps there were security matters or design rights problems. Again I am sure Roy Simons will know.
I worked in a small team on the display equipment and height extraction for the S244 "Big Noddy" S-band heightfinder.

The team under Fred Kime comprised:

John Sellars               Project leader, display system designer
Norman Morton          Display circuit designer with John Sellars
Nick Tovey                 Interfaces between PPI displays and heightfinder control
Alan Matthews (Self)   Design of panel converter which turned the horizontal position of a display marker controlled by a Joystick into height numbers for distribution to height-requesting PPI display operators. This was designed to be 0.1% accurate and was really an early form of digital voltmeter.

Also at Broomfield on display systems with Fred Kime were:

Ken Knight        Display system team leader
Mike Boyaval     Display systems and rate aiding
Trevor Sawyer   Display backup circuits
Jack Cox           Display Backup circuits
Pat Daley          Range marks Generators
Tom Gaskell      Display Systems
Frank Burrows   Power Supplies
Derek Jeffries    Expert circuit designer
Don Beckett      Expert circuit designer

Many of these systems were sold to NATO, and some to Singapore, and South Africa
In 1959 this group went to Baddow and they were eventually integrated with the Baddow design engineers.

The High-Power Group at Broomfield

 

This group designed the High Power transmitters SR1000 SR1030 and signal processors and were in the high power lab under the tower.

H N C Ellis Robinson          Transmitter Group Chief
Bruce Neale                     Transmitter development Manager
Colin Latham                    Development Manager
Arthur Stevens                Waveguide systems
Fred Chittenden               Mechanical designer.
Dick Greenwood               Receivers and IF strips.
Eric Gildersleve                Radar Performance
Tony Slocome                  Signal Processing
Peter Barlow
Frank Henchie                  S244 Mechanical Designer
Pete Smith                       Mechanical Engineer – Did much work on the hydraulic Ram
George Tchaikovsky          S244 Servo Engineer.  He had terrible problems with the design

After this the display systems became Datamation, under Roger Shipway, designing the Fur Hat Swedish system and/or Linesman.
            
The information here is from memory and may well be incorrect or incomplete, please tell me of any errors or omissions.

 

Tributes

 

From Barry F

I’ve just heard from Matty’s son the sad news that Matty passed away this morning. After seeing him yesterday it hasn’t come as a surprise but it is always a shock when it happens.

I never worked with Matty at Marconi’s but we became friends because of our love of motorcycles and cars and later, for the last 26 years playing golf together. He was a very talented engineer and was able to turn his hand to anything. He will be missed by so many of his friends and colleagues.

 

From Mike P

I recall particularly his practical help with motorbike problems and where he would immediately revise his priorities, drop his current WIP and help you to solve your problem.

Assuming there is to be a funeral, that will be a particularly difficult one for a lot of us.

So many memories...thankfully mostly happy ones, excepting the past few months.

 

From Philip B

As a 19 year old in the ‘industrial’ stage of a student apprenticeship I was allocated to tech. pubs. for a 4 week stint. I was given a pile of very draft handbooks on a C&C system for South Africa & told to see one Alan Matthews to pick his brains and finish the books within my period in tech pubs. Alan was the system engineer, commissioning/re-designing the cabins with a tight deadline so he could spare me little of his time.

I spent hours in those cabins grabbing 5 minutes of Matty’s time here and there. He was able to multi-task talking to me whilst measuring unrelated parameters.

When it came to my real first job I went straight into Systems A whilst most of my contemporaries favoured circuit design.

That started me on a memorable career as a systems engineer then management then returning to systems engineering - all down to the work example set by Matty.

Thanks Matty & RIP, 

P.S. The handbooks were finished thanks to Matty’s knowledge & attitude and tech. pubs bending the rules to pay me overtime.

 

From Ian G

Alan was a thoroughly nice man and I was very sad to hear of his demise. I worked in his wake but never directly with him, our friendship was mainly rooted in motorbikes. I remember my son Peter getting a burned leg from riding pillion as we blasted one of Alan's new two-wheeled acquisitions on the road twixt Danbury and Maldon. He was a fine engineer and could fix anything. I remember him restoring a crashed BMW bike - He took the smashed-up speedometer with its clock-like components and rebuilt it as new!

He was a great raconteur — which was great in the pub — but not so welcome in a busy workspace. I've heard some of the ungrateful refer to Matty as "Rentachat". Oh, how I'd love to hear one of those chats now…

RIP Alan

 

From Bob M

Even though we were the same age, Alan always seemed to be that little bit fitter and definitely more adventurous than me.  Our paths in Marconi didn't cross often but we did  meet socially.  Somewhere in the depths of my  files there is a photo of Marconi apprentices on a coach returning from playing Rugby against an EE Team. We won.

I was always in awe of how, with such ease, Alan got on his Vincent. Far too heavy for me.  Now he has ridden off to join the ranks of all before. Good journey Alan, you will be sorely missed. It was a privilege to know you.

 

From Roger N

I worked with Alan through most of the Malaysian KAWAL project as a young Field Engineer.  He would always take the time to explain and offer help.  A pleasure to work with.

 

From Nigel D

Sad news indeed. I worked closely with Alan on the KAWAL project. He was the D&DH Requirement Authority and I was the Radar Requirement Authority. This meant we spent many an 'interesting' meeting with the Malaysian in-plant team who held court in Y block. They had very 'challenging' interpretations of the technical annexes to the contract and how they should be proven. An extremely stressful time, but Alan took it all in his stride, largely without complaint and with a large dose of ironic humour. I think he treated work as just a paid version of his hobby! Always a wealth of wonderful anecdotes, he was a fine engineer and, more importantly, a lovely man.

 

From Don W

Add another of Alan's fans. We did not work together but swapped notes on our MGBs. Great guy.

 

From Brian C

How did I miss Alan during our apprenticeships? He was one year ahead; but we led full eventful lives.                                                                                   

I followed him into St Marys Lodge in 1953 with another group of likely lads.

Then our apprenticeships blossomed until “out of time” we ventured into “engineer status”

That was where I first heard him at the other end of room 100, Baddow .  Many of the MOGS to be were there in Datamation; I with Ron Ward’s section of display designers.

I didn’t know what Alan was up to, but could hear him often, whilst I diligently tried my hand at circuit design.

Funny how years later our paths crossed on Project Kawal. I was given a fine team of now experienced engineers, which included Alan as D&DH systems leader.

So we were now colleagues and friends in close contact; though Alan’s spare time was spent different to me, we both had an interest in motorcycling.

Always so helpful in and out of work sorting any mechanical engineering problem that confounded me.

During Kawal we had Monday morning prayers during a tough project period. Some one asked where Alan was early Monday morning. To which I robustly answered how late he would be at the other end of the day. Alan was a 110% man. The spirit of the 1950s was we were not clock-watchers. We were engineers to the core exemplified by AHM.

A fine honest friend whom all favoured and will be sadly missed.

One of Alan’s close friends was George Coates and they ventured on bikes to IOM several times. Don’t hear much of George these days.

It will be hard to imagine MRSL/MOGS without Alan.

Rest well Alan after a fulfilling life

 

From Geoff M

Alan was two and half decades before me at MRSL and most of my contact with him was during tea in hut 28 at Rivenhall. He was always full of great stories and interesting to listen to. Our paths crossed briefly when I did some work with S600 systems and he was a wealth of information. A good man and a fine engineer who will be missed by many in both the engineering world and the music world where he was an accomplished bass player in the Chelmsford Jazz circuit.

 

From Nigel C

A very sad loss. I have known Allan for about 60 years I first met him with his sleeping bag in room 100 in Baddow; he was working day and night to complete a project destined for South Africa. He was an excellent engineer, always helpful and great fun to be with. I was amazed how every question you asked him somehow got equated to a part of a motorcycle. I spent many happy evenings in the Red Lion at Margaretting, listening to him playing bass with the Washboard Syncopators and other bands. He will be greatly missed.

 

From Derek K

Alan, others and I often shared a lunch table at the Waterhouse Lane Canteen on many, many occasions over 20+ years. We heard anecdotes of past projects and their problems, together with those of his current project too. In addition there were tales  of the motorbike and car issues and of trips to the IoM. I thoroughly enjoyed listening. When not on specific projects, Alan was involved with Sales Support travelling all over the world to give presentations. Then, when in the UK, he would often assemble slides and give evening talks to local groups and organisations (eg Womens Institute and many others).

That he could fit all of the above activities, music and family into standard days/weeks, taking it all in his stride, without any apparent stress or panic, is probably the best indication of a very talented person & engineer.

 

From George R

I worked with Alan on many projects and could not have wished for a more supportive and technically able colleague. He always seemed to be able to find a solution and in particular to convince a customer when things were getting difficult either during contract negotiation or in final acceptance and handover.
As has previously been said he always seemed to find a way of bringing the conversation back to motorbikes or music.
A sad loss of a gifted engineer and colleague. RIP Alan