Uncle Phil was a painfully shy man who shrank from life's challenges and responsibilities, leaving home only to gain a law degree from Aberystwyth and complete his national service in Malaya. He preferred the solitude of the family home Cwrt Hir where he could indulge his love of countryside, wildlife and gardening.

Maybe because he could never truly embrace adulthood himself, he was attuned to the magic of childhood. He spent hours looking for suitably safe but high trees for his nieces and nephew to climb and then stood at the bottom leaning on his makeshift staff urging them higher - well away from over-anxious parents.

He took them on long rambles looking for badgers, mushrooms, birds' nests or wild flowers. Summer mornings began with squeals of laughter as children were ferried up to the vegetable garden in his wheelbarrow to lift potatoes, carrots and pick peas for lunch. He didn't forget which children had planted what seedlings and where. Just before he left Cwrt Hir he showed Rachel and Sara the apple trees they had planted from pips some 20 years earlier. He had carefully looked after these treasures because plants and children were tremendously important to him.

Blackberrying and apple picking with Uncle Phil was, until he so cruelly lost his mobility, an annual ritual. He kept bees, another gentle occupation and let the children help tend the hives and extract the honey. I'm sure everyone here who was a regular visitor to Cwrt Hir can still remember the ever-present smell of honeycomb and beeswax.

After a lifetime of refusing to discuss leaving Cwrt Hir, it was the sight of his beloved garden all overgrown after several years of ill health that persuaded him to move to Llangain. Sadly most of his remaining life there was spent trapped both indoors and in a wheelchair but his days were lightened by the kindness of neighbours which he greatly appreciated.

For children, Uncle Phil was the most entertaining adult who ever lived. He made stilts from sturdy tree branches and bows with whittled arrows. He loved cricket - Rachel still has the cricket bat he made for her aged four, and remembers vividly how much they adored 'playing cricket' while Uncle Phil spent many a long hour thrashing the brambles to retrieve lost balls. It was always he who would buy and hide chocolate eggs in the woods on Easter Sunday. When it was wet and they could not go out he would organise a treasure hunt in the house - sometimes it would take most of the day to work out the clues.

He would let at least his two oldest nieces loose with enormous petrol-driven lawn mowers resulting in at least one mower, plus attached child, careering down the bank and into a tree with Uncle Phil in hot pursuit. He taught them also to shoot a two-two-calibre rifle using yoghurt pots as targets. He saved his biggest bonfires for the weekends when children would be visiting. He lit the ends of hollow-stemmed cow parsley so that they could pretend to smoke with him while he enjoyed the occasional cigar.

Summer holidays began with a pantry full of fizzy drinks and a freezer full of ice-lollies in readiness for the annual influx of family.

His cavalier attitude towards property meant that furniture could be jumped on, darts were played against the back of the kitchen door, with scores written in chalk on the nearest available cupboard. Not content with recording family heights on the doorframe in pen, Uncle Phil would use a chisel. Sheets were ripped from beds to wave from upstairs windows so that children, heartbroken at leaving, would know he was still waving long after cars had turned out of the drive. Rachel and Sara cannot once remember him getting annoyed even when as very young children they jumped up and down on him at daybreak.

While enjoying intellectual pursuits such as chess, scrabble and poetry reading, he also loved gadgets like his papier-mâché briquette maker to turn newspapers into logs for the fire. It made a horrible mess, and was soon abandoned, so that unfortunately for those trying to help him with housekeeping, the piles of newspapers on the steps down to the cellar carried on getting bigger & bigger. However, the most useful gadget – an automatic switch for the water pump – never occurred to him. Mealtimes were therefore regularly punctuated by the sound of water falling on the yard, with Uncle Phil crashing into the outhouse to flick the switch.

He encouraged reading. Encyclopaedias, books on archaeology, birds and history were regular gifts from him. He loved music and was always ready to listen to childish efforts with musical instruments or the piano. He loved to sing especially accompanied by Sara on the harmonium. He will be especially missed by his four nieces, Rachel, Sara, Helen and Ann and by his nephew David and also his 7 great nieces and nephews.

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