Chris Beney obituary

Other lives: Aviation and computer engineer who dedicated much of his life to increasing access to public paths

My campaigning colleague Chris Beney, who has died aged 93, believed that paths should be wide and accessible. An aviation and computer engineer by profession, he spent much of his life championing accessible paths in Hertfordshire and beyond.

Chris was a trustee of the Open Spaces Society, of which I am general secretary, for 30 years from 1996, and its chair from 2018 to 2020. Representing the society, he was a member of the British Standards Institution’s panel on structures on public paths from 1999 to 2020 (and its chair from 2005), guiding it through three revisions of the standard, and winning agreement for the least restrictive option (gap, gate and stile, in that order).

With Natural England, the government’s access adviser, in 2018 he helped to establish the Centre for Outdoor Accessibility Training at Aston Rowant, Oxfordshire, for testing accessible gates and mobility equipment.

Born in London, the son of Charles Beney, an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, and Dorothea (nee Pridden), a pharmacist, Chris enjoyed a rural boyhood with his elder brother, Peter, in Kent, Surrey and Somerset. His first memory of injustice was when the Crystal Palace burned down in 1936, shortly before his planned visit.

After a student apprenticeship with General Electric Company, he went to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he met Hazel Goodman, an art student; they were married in 1957, a year after his graduation.

With an MA in electrical engineering, Chris was offered special government work at GEC Stanmore in lieu of national service. There, he worked on air-to-air missile computers. At Boscombe Down, in Wiltshire, he helped to build an airborne digital navigation system in the De Havilland Comet airliner, later used on Concorde, and was project manager for the Concorde flight-test-replay system. He also led a small team in flight trials of Meteor and Canberra aeroplanes, once landing in a snowstorm with the pilot having lost control: “The past does flash before you,” Chris said.

In 1977 he set up Yeneb (Beney backwards) Pattinson Ltd to build and repair computers. He retired at 55. In 1986 he established the Pittecroft Trust to support projects close to his heart, such as an unsegregated school in Northern Ireland, as well as many access initiatives.

By then he lived in Bushey, Hertfordshire, where he campaigned against noisy nuisance at Elstree Aerodrome, founding the Association for the Containment of Elstree Aerodrome.

His first involvement in public paths came in the late 1980s, when spectators were challenged for watching the Elstree airshow from a public footpath. He researched the law and discovered that the spectators had done no wrong. This led him to establish the Bushey and District Footpaths Association in 1991.

Chris was generous to all who wanted to learn about paths and a stickler for grammar, with a lovely sense of humour. His legacy includes the many paths in Hertfordshire that are open, welcoming, and free from clutter.

Chris is survived by Hazel, their three children, Joanna, Charles and Grace, and four grandchildren. A fifth grandchild predeceased him.