Ray Swinfield (1939-2019)

On the morning of Friday, 17^th June 2022, an auction will take place at Gardiner Houlgate at Corsham in Wiltshire of the musical instruments of the pre-eminent jazz flute player, Ray Swinfield (1939-2019). 38 lots, numbered 1611-1648 in the sale catalogue, are his collection being sold by his widow Lindy.

I was contacted by Lindy Burrows Swinfield in August 2021 to share family history information about her late husband. Ray had died in October 2019 in London where he had lived since he first visited in 1964. Lindy had written an obituary of husband which was published in London Jazz News on 15^th June 2022. As can be seen, he played with all the greats of jazz music. He also worked on many film soundtracks, commercials, TV and West End shows and pop music recordings. Two of his most popular claims to fame are that he played on the 1967 Beatles song Penny Lane as well as on the much-repeated childrens’ TV programme Mr Benn, originally of 1971-1972.  

Ray was born on 14^th December 1939 in Sydney, NSW, Australia as the only child of Raymond Walter Swinfield (1912-1984) and Gertrude Brigid (Murphy) (1907-1995). His grandparents married at Balmain and later lived in the Leichardt area of Sydney where they had their five children. As such, Ray junior was the great-great-great-grandson of William Swinfield (1804-1876), who arrived in Sydney on 30^th December 1848. As such, he was the progenitor of the NSW line of Swinfields who still live there today. He had arrived from Warwickshire with his family aboard the “Walmer Castle”.

On looking back through my much earlier correspondence with other Swinfields in the 1970s and 1980s, I found that I had first heard from Ray back in 1973/4 in response to a circular that I had sent to all Swinfields listed in the English telephone directories. He then lived in Kingston upon Thames and was able to provide a brief outline of his pedigree which he had gleaned from his father who still lived in Australia. Later Ray wrote again in January 1988. As Lindy had told me, Ray was very interested in his family’s history! Ray was able to provide me with a fairly detailed outline of his family’s story which had been sent to Ray’s widowed mother “Dot” or “Dollie” and Raymond junior in late 1987 by his uncle Arthur Norman Swinfield (1905-2000). Ray’s mother had moved to live with her son in Kingston after the death of her husband in Sydney in 1984. Both his father and uncle have commemorative plaques in Australian cemeteries.

Besides Lindy Jennifer Burrows, whom Ray married in 1996 in his native Australia, he had previously been married in 1970 in the Merton Registration District of south London to a widow whose maiden name was Rosemarie Hood. Through her he gained a step-daughter, Caroline Angela Louise McDonald-Peattie, who had been born in 1964.

Ray Swinfield died on 4^th October 2019 after a long battle over two decades against the debilitating diseases of Parkinson’s and later Dementia. He had played his last musical note in public, ironically, on the Parkinson TV show in 2007.