Reg Bedding

Reginald Leonard Bedding grew up in Leeds and went to what was then Roundhay Grammar School.

Following school, he began training as a quantity surveyor and obtained his qualifications while in the army.

The post-war years were busy ones.

Mr Bedding joined the Leeds firm and rose to become senior partner. Under his leadership, the Rex Proctor partnership thrived and he gave it the foundations on which it continued to grow. With a nationwide portfolio of clients, it now employs 110 staff.

A professional highlight for him was the close working relationship he established with Ken Morrison of Morrisons supermarkets, and he was happy to know this strong working relationship continued with their successors.

An active member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, he was also a regular on the overnight sleeper train that used to run from London to Leeds, following committee meetings in the capital.

He took his connections as a professional seriously, and every weekday went into Leeds city centre for lunch with other business leaders.

Mr Bedding relaxed through playing golf and joined Moortown Golf Club and Sand Moor Golf Club in the late 1950s, enjoying a time as captain at both clubs.

Sand Moor’s mixed section still competes for the Bedding Trophy, which he presented to the club in the year of his captaincy.

He had a lifelong interest in horse racing. He began owning racehorses in the 1960s, and for many years they were trained by Jimmy Etherington in Malton.

When he died, he owned three, being trained by Ed McMahon at Tamworth, and he had 13 syndicate ownerships at Highclere in Berkshire. His most recent favourite was Noble Storm.

Mr Bedding named his first few horses after people at Rex Proctor and Partners. His first horse, Officer Kelly, was named after a naval officer who joined the partnership after the war. He had lost a leg, and although Mr Bedding never said as much, friends suspected he chose the name to give Officer Kelly the chance to run again.

He and his future wife, Angela Bertram, first met at sea – when they were allocated places at the same table for the duration of a holiday cruise.

The future Mrs Bedding was a successful businesswoman with interests based in Birmingham, and for 17 years the couple maintained two bases, there and in Yorkshire.

Their first family home was opposite Wetherby Golf Club; the family made one more move before buying within the newly-converted Mill in Boston Spa.

Eventually they settled on Solihull as their only base, and it was there that Mr Bedding died.

After his retirement, the couple took to travelling. They went up the Amazon, spent winters in Barbados, and on one trip jumped out of dinghies in the Arctic.

At the time of his death, Mr Bedding was still a member of the golf clubs, as well as Lascelles Masonic Lodge, Wetherby and the Rotary Club of Leeds, both of which he had joined in the mid 1950s.

Mr Bedding is survived by his wife and two of their three children, Robert and Diana, and grandchildren Lisa and Tom.