The funeral procession through Bermondsey
Barry Albin-Dyer: The Senior Undertaker during the repatriation ceremony of ten British Servicemen killed when the C130 Hercules they were travelling in crashed in Iraq.
Today we rang a half muffled quarter peal of Plain Bob Triples as the cortege of Barry Albin-Dyer passed the church.
http://www.bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=468504
The following is taken from Barry’s obituary in the Daily Telegraph:
Barry Albin-Dyer, who has died of cancer aged 64, was for 30 years the chairman of F A Albin & Sons, a venerable firm of funeral directors in Bermondsey, south London, which was tasked by the MoD with organising the repatriation and funerals of members of the Armed Forces who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Clad in immaculate top hat and undertaker’s frock-coat and brandishing a cane, Albin-Dyer was a familiar sight at Bermondsey funerals, as well as at Wootton Bassett (and later Brize Norton), leading the cortege in the tradition known as “paging”.
It was Albin-Dyer who walked ahead of the flower-draped vintage Rolls-Royce containing the coffin of Jade Goody, the reality television star, in 2009. When the procession arrived at the market in Bermondsey where Jade Goody’s grandfather had kept a stall, Albin-Dyer released a white dove from a cage.
His pall-bearers also officiated at the funeral of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor in 2001.