Former Fife GP Dr Ernest Gregson, who practised in Kirkcaldy all of his working life, has died at the age of 91.
Born in Southport, he grew up in the Lake District and was educated at Gresham School in Norfolk before graduating from Edinburgh University in 1942.
After a brief spell at Killearn Hospital near Drymen he served as a regimental medical officer in Italy during the second world war.
He married Janet Henderson Lawson, of Markinch, with whom he had three children Kathleen, Peter and Helen.
After the war the couple settled in Kirkcaldy, where Dr Gregson become assistant to Dr Charles Irvine-Jones in Nicol Street.
With the rapid expansion of the town, he was soon conducting surgeries from his home on Bennochy Road.
Happy to deliver babies at home when the district midwife needed help, his practice attracted many of the larger families in the town, particularly amongst Polish and Italian newcomers.
He was also appointed a police surgeon, conducting first-aid training for police officers, and acted as judge in first-aid competitions.
After Mrs Gregson’s death in 1983, followed shortly by his retirement, he married former Errol schoolteacher Violet Hodge and moved to Perth’s Dundee Road.
After Violet died in 1996, he married Catriona MacLeod, a former headmistress and 1936 Gold Medal winner of the Gaelic Mod. She died in 2000.
Practical involvement with Murray Royal Hospital and St John’s Episcopal Church in Perth, together with his interests in wildlife, archaeology and the history of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, kept him active.
Throughout his life, much time and energy was devoted to the rebuilding of a ruined house close to his childhood home in Lakeland.
He spent his last years at Viewlands House in Perth.