TRIBUTES have been paid to Edgar Thomas Bayliss, who has died at the age of 90. He was for many years the senior boarding house master for Queen Elizabeth’s School, Crediton, and Head of Biology.

Mr Bayliss joined the school in 1949 and stayed for 40 years.

Affectionately known as Eddie, he inspired generations of pupils by imaginative and thoughtful teaching and stimulated careers, many distinguished, in medicine (including surgery), veterinary practice, and teaching and research in biology and biochemistry.

Outside school he had diverse interests and prominent standing as a biologist.

Eddie was born on December 8, 1924, at East Hoathly, Sussex. The family soon settled near Addlestone, Surrey, where as a budding naturalist he enjoyed the woods at the end of the garden and playing in the river nearby with his elder sister Marjorie.

At the age of 11 he won a scholarship to the Strode Grammar School at Egham, about seven miles away, to which he travelled daily by bicycle and train (except one snowy day when he managed it entirely by bicycle).

Eddie’s father, a skilled joiner making ash frames for motor cars, kept the family comfortable for a while, with their own house, but poor health hindered his regular job and he took his chances by becoming self-employed.

They were forced to move into a single rented room, eventually with an uncle at Filton, Bristol, Marjorie being billeted elsewhere.

When Eddie was just 15 his father died and he suspended his education to supplement his mother’s weekly 15s 10d from a Friendly Society by gardening work.

She found a small house where she took in lodgers, and they could now get by at a modest level; Eddie resumed education at Kingswood Grammar School, where he developed his lifelong love of classical music and opera under the guidance of the inspiring music master (who took groups to concerts at Colston Hall, Bristol), and excelled athletically, winning the county schools cross-country championship. He spent happy holidays at High Ham, Somerset.

During World War Two Eddie joined the RAF, training in Canada on a Tiger Moth.

His poor night vision disqualified him from being a pilot, but he was able to serve on glider tugs, became an instructor and was promoted to Sergeant. (Not a natural combatant, the destiny he then envisaged for himself was death in an aeroplane).

After demob Eddie worked for the Norwich Union for a time, but he soon turned to education and applied for a position at Queen Elizabeth's School (QES) to teach general science.

In 1949 the headmaster, Dennis A. Grenfell (known to all as “DAG”), took him on provided that he could satisfy the local Education Committee by obtaining a degree.

In fact, for one reason or another that was postponed until 1978, when his mother saw him capped and gowned at Exeter.

Meanwhile, after teaching general science for a time, at the urging of keen sixth-formers and with the encouragement of Miss Poyser of Crediton High School, he proposed to DAG a pure biology syllabus for QES, then only available in the girls’ school.

DAG said he would not stand in Eddie’s way if he thought he could make a “go” of it.

And so Eddie entered his heyday as a schoolmaster; within a few years he also had his pride and joy, a purpose-built biology laboratory.

But versatility enabled him, occasionally, to teach other subjects, including mathematics, French and English.

His timetable became very demanding, at one time allotting him 34 lessons a week. He also applied himself to the athleticism at the heart of the ethos of Q.E.S., particularly cross-country running.

In 1964 Eddie married school matron Barbara (née Smith), daughter of the Vicar of Zeal Monachorum. They had one child, Annie.

Eddie was a life member of the Institute of Biology (now Royal Society of Biology) and a Chartered Biologist. He was, at heart, a botanist, hence his abiding love of Dartmoor, where he took his favourite walks. One such exertion whilst still in his 60s ruptured Eddie's Achilles tendon and led to his being operated on at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital by a former pupil, Christopher Weatherley (now consultant orthopaedic surgeon).

Requiring successive knee replacements in his late 70s, Eddie asked the surgeon to get him walking on Dartmoor in his 80s—and he did.

Indeed, such was his grit that in his late 80s he was backpacking around North Africa as a naturalist with his old friend and colleague John Cowler. His keenness on wildlife also took him many times to Lundy, where he would enthral groups from the IoB or the Devon Wildlife Trust as guide to the island’s history and various habitats.

He was a life member and sometime trustee of the DWT, and contributed a lot of data to the Devon database of Butterfly Conservation, also to the Meteorological Office.

In 1971, at the height of his career as a busy schoolmaster, Eddie acquired Thorne House, near Bow, historically a long house (a hall for human occupants and a shippen for cattle) dating from the 14th century.

With the school caretaker he undertook most of the work to restore this semi-ruin to habitability, using inherited skills to add joinery harmonising with original timbers. This was to be his home for retirement with Barbara. He also persuaded the vendor to donate a generous corner of the neighbouring field for a garden, which over the years he developed in compartments of varying character: thus it was that sitting on his terrace on a summer’s day he was able to proclaim that he had planted everything in sight except the domesticated pasture of his lawn.

Indeed, his skill with plant propagation made him a proud contributor to the annual plant sale at St Petrock’s Church, Clannaborough, where he was also a long-serving churchwarden.

Eddie also revelled in his membership of Crediton Probus Club, of which was the secretary for many years and took his turn as president.

With his phenomenal memory, Eddie recalled names of former pupils unseen for as long as 50 years.

He loved visitors and for him a day seldom went by without a visit or contact by an old colleague or pupil.

Just two years ago he made a tour of North America, proudly visiting old pupils who had flourished on the original basis of his tuition.

His 90th birthday was celebrated in December 2014 over two days of parties with a host of admirers and friends.

Barbara died in 2011. Eddie is survived by one daughter, Annie.

In italics : Eddie Bayliss: December 8, 1924 – September 30, 2015

Alan Quick