THE former head of catering at Craven College, John Eaton, died suddenly at home on October 24 at the age of 64.

John enjoyed a 44-year career in the hospitality industry, many of them at Craven College where he trained many hundreds of students over that time.

In December 2015 he took off his chef’s hat for the last time and retired to his home in Ilkley which he shared with his wife, Ann. He said he always felt fortunate to have worked at the original college campus in Skipton High Street, and was proud to see the college grow.

Over the years, he had helped to develop the college’s training facilities from one basic domestic kitchen to two new modern training and production kitchens along with a brasserie restaurant, which was used by students to hone their kitchen and front-of-house skills.

The catering arm of the college is now run from the Aireville campus.

He was a member of the Craft Guild of Chefs and the Professional Association for Catering Education and spent five years working with City and Guilds as an external verifier for Advanced Professional Cookery courses.

He worked with numerous employers and catering establishments and regularly took students on exchange programmes to Spain, Ireland and London, helped them to cater for many prestigious local events including mayoral banquets in Skipton Town Hall and supervised them when they took over and ran all departments of two local hotels for a week – the Falcon Manor in Settle and what was the Wilson Arms Hotel in Threshfield.

John has also taken part in numerous local cookery demonstrations and his students have competed in local and national competitions. He once took some final year students down to London for interviews at the Dorchester and Savoy Hotels only to find out some years later that they held senior positions with Gordon Ramsey and Anton Edelmann.

Angela Jordan head of school construction, engineering and service industries at Craven College paid tribute saying: “John Eaton worked at Craven College for 32 years, he was hugely passionate about his department and was well respected by his longstanding team, the college community and by the many links he had developed within the industry.

“John developed and maintained an outstanding department built on high expectations and high standards. Many of John’s students progressed into the hospitality industry and gained exciting employment.

“It was such a pleasure working with John who was highly professional and an absolute gentleman.”

A funeral service is to take place on November 25 at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, in Ilkley.

Due to current restrictions attendance will be by invitation.