Hundreds of people including ex-students, teachers, parents and residents, lined Watchet’s streets on Saturday morning to say goodbye to Alan Woollam - sportsman, fundraiser and inspirational teacher for 37 years, as his funeral procession wound through the town.

Mr Woollam died on February 2 in Williton hospital aged 74 after several years of ill-health. He was a teacher and later headmaster of St Decuman’s First School for 20 years before taking over the newly-built Knights Templar community church school in 1990, remaining head teacher until his retirement in 2007.

 The funeral was held at the school and 12 ex-students carried the coffin in and out of the service.

 In 2009, with his wife Melanie, Mr Woollam founded the Watchet Harbour Community Bookshop as a tribute to their late son Tom, and which has since raised over £225,000 for cystic fibrosis research and local organisations.

 Many ex-pupils have come forward with fond reminiscences of Mr Woollam. A typical memory was: “He had a famous catch-phrase which hundreds of us have always remembered: ‘Do your best.’

 “He would write DYB on our work and we still use it to this day as encouragement to our grandchildren!”

 Crowds applauded as the procession, headed by town crier David Milton and escorted by police and Watchet Carnival marshals, passed up West Street and Swain Street on its way to the funeral service at Knights Templar School, pausing at the site of the former St Decuman’s School.

 Funeral director Julie Langdon, a former pupil of Mr Woollam, said: “The funeral was the biggest I have organised in nine years and showed just how loved, respected and highly thought of he was.

 “The whole town wanted to be involved and I hope it will leave a lasting memory of someone who will be very much missed. It was Watchet’s version of a state funeral…”

 See Friday West Somerset Free Press for a full report