Kenneth Darnton

Born in Newcastle, his family home was a modest terrace house not far from the park where he played in as a child and heard his first brass band. That was the start of a life-long love of music, and an extensive knowledge of the light classical repertoire.

When he was 12, the family moved to Southowram, his father establishing the jewellery firm of Collingwood's in near-by Halifax.

In 1932, Kenneth Darnton joined the firm and became the fourth generation of Darntons involved in the jewellery business. He later assumed responsibility as managing director of the firm.

He was an instinctively successful businessman, with a combination of an extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the art and craft of retail jewellery, and a generously welcoming manner to customers, regardless of how little or much they had come to spend.

He met Vera Drage when they were sheltering from the rain in a bus shelter in Bournemouth, where both families were holidaying. They kept in touch, and in May, 1941, were married at St Jude's Church, Halifax, Kenneth Darnton in his RAF uniform.

Shortly after the wedding he was posted to Singapore, and would have been involved in its calamitous fall had he not contracted meningitis which prevented his sailing there.

He spent the remainder of the War in Halifax, and in the mid 1940s he became the committee chairman in the town of the Council for the Encouragement of the Arts, later to become the Arts Council of Great Britain.

In the post-war years, the jewellery business flourished, and in the course of developing it, he became a member of the National Association of Goldsmiths and a Fellow of the National Jewellers' Association.

In the 1960s the family business was taken over by a multiple group and Kenneth Darnton subsequently left to establish his own highly successful business of King's Court Jewellers in York. He moved the family home to Adel where Vera was elected to Leeds City Council.

In Freemasonry, he was a provincial grand lodge officer, a Past Master of Victory Lodge in Halifax and, more recently, a member of the Richard Linnecar Lodge in Wakefield. He was an active member of the Wakefield Probus Club and a committee member of the Sandal Support Group for Wakefield Hospice. He was also a committee member of the South Ward Wakefield Divisional Conservative Association.

Following his wife's death in 1990, he moved to be near his son in Wakefield, and in 1995 to Surrey, living near his daughter and her family. For the last five years of his life he lived in Suffolk,

Kenneth Darnton is survived by his daughter Anne, son Christopher and four grandchildren.