On and off, Prior Park has been a centre of Catholic education since the
1830s. In the 1920s it was taken over by the Congregation of Christian
Brothers, but by 1980 pupil numbers had declined, the buildings needed
attention, and the school faced closure.

In 1981 Dowden was appointed a governor of Prior Park, and of its prep school
at Cricklade, Wiltshire. A rescue plan was devised. The new board put the
schools under lay management and teaching, and in 1982 Prior Park went
co-educational. Dowden chaired the buildings and works committee and then,
from 1985, the executive committee. In 1990 he was elected chairman of the
governors.

Under Dowden, in 1994 the National Trust was persuaded to take over Prior
Park’s magnificent landscape gardens; an AstroTurf pitch was constructed at
the senior school; and new girls’ houses were built, as was a theatre. By
the time he retired in 1998, pupil numbers had more than doubled.

Ronald Scott Charles Dowden was born on June 9 1923, the son of Major Charles
Dowden, who won a DSO and an MC in the Great War and died when Ronnie was
11.

On leaving Eastbourne College, in 1941 Ronnie joined the Army as a rifleman in
the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Commissioned in 1942, he was sent to North
Africa. In 1943 he landed near Naples as commander of a company which
consisted largely of men who had deserted from other regiments. He took part
in the successful assault on Hill 411 (Monte Rotundo) near Sessa, which was
taken by night under intense machine-gun fire.

Dowden and his men were then ordered to defend a small hillock near Anzio, but
came under heavy mortar attack and accurate sniper fire. By June 18 his
small force was surrounded and they had lost contact with their HQ; they
were taken prisoner by the Italians.

Dowden recalled being asked by a German officer if he was being well-treated
by his Italian captors. “Yes,” Dowden replied, “although one of them took my
watch.” Within 24 hours his watch had been restored to him.

He was taken to an Italian prison camp, and thence by cattle truck to Stalag
7a in Germany, which also housed a number of Russians. An attempt to dig an
escape tunnel was discovered when the excavators caused a telegraph pole to
collapse.

Subsequently Dowden was moved to Oflag 79, where the PoWs had a secret
wireless which kept them informed of the progress of the war in Europe.
Dowden’s job was to update a map charting these developments, which the
German guards were pleased to consult so that they too could keep abreast of
events.

Released at the end of the war, Dowden remained in the Army, serving in
Berlin, the Staff College at Camberley and finally at the MoD. In 1973 he
retired to take up farming on a smallholding near Axminster, Devon. Aiming
to be as self-sufficient as possible, he pursued market gardening and kept
sheep, chickens and bees.

He was appointed a JP in 1974 and later became chairman of the Devon
magistrates and of the Devon Probation Service. He was chairman of the Devon
branch of Action Research for the Crippled Child from 1980 to 1990.

A devout Catholic, he was a loyal supporter of his local church, St Mary’s, in
Axminster. In 1997 he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St
Gregory.

He was appointed Deputy Lieutenant for Devon in 1982.

Ronnie Dowden married, in 1951, Anne Lever, who survives him with a son and a
daughter; another daughter predeceased him.