Architect; Born April 11, 1912; Died February 28, 2008. JOHN Coghill, who has died aged 95, moved to Glenrothes in its formative years and went on to become chief architect of the Fife new town.
Born of the manse in Tongue, Sutherland, in 1912, where his grandfather David Lundie was the minister, Coghill was the younger son of Sinclair Coghill (late of Dunrobin and Thurso) and Lamont (Tottie) Lundie.
Brought up in Dunrobin, after his father became a cashier with the Sutherland Estates, Coghill attended Golspie primary and senior secondary schools and then went straight into work with the Horn architectural practice in Golspie before going on to take his degree at Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen.
Following several years' war service in India with the Royal Engineers, during which he reached the rank of captain, Coghill joined the staff of Fife County Council in Kirkcaldy before moving to Glenrothes, eventually becoming chief architect.
It was there, well into his fifties, that this bachelor met and married his secretary's daughter, Adelaide McGregor, a happy union that produced his daughter Alison and son David.
He was a man of wide and varied interests. He played football at school and in the Boys' Brigade as a youth, and golf for most of his life (he was a member at Ladybank and former captain of Glenrothes). He was also a founder member of Glenrothes Art Club and a former toastmaster.
A close friend of the family remembers his enlivening the then-annual Golspie fancy- dress parades of the 1950s with his imaginative themes, costumes and decorated buggies. On the premature death of Adelaide from cancer in 1998, Coghill, at an age when many men might have simply given up, moved south to Bedford to fulfil a long-cherished dream of serving the Panacea Society, a religious organisation with a belief in latter-day prophets and the second coming of Christ. He had first been attracted to the society while a student in Aberdeen and latterly became its treasurer, a post he held until his death.
He is survived by his son and daughter, and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren who brought him particular joy in his final years.
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