A WAR veteran who went on to exchange the grocery business for the priesthood has died at the age of 85.

Arthur Stabler was born in Annfield Plain, near Consett, County Durham, but spent most of his life in Richmond and the Yorkshire Dales.

He joined the RAF during the Second World War and trained for rescue services during the D-Day landings, when he was at Gold Beach.

He also accompanied the Allied forces in their push from Ostend to Hamburg and later witnessed the liberation of the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

During his time with the RAF, he also won trophies as a middle distance runner and once played flanker for Harlequins rugby union team.

On being demobbed in 1945, Mr Stabler ran the family grocery shop, Joseph Whittells, in Richmond Market Place, until 1961.

He was the youngest member of the former Richmond Borough Council. In the mid-Forties, in his capacity as a councillor, he met Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, who visited the town.

He married Margaret Thornton in 1951 and, in 1956, the couple had a son, Adrian, who still lives in the town.

In 1961, the family moved to Worcestershire to run a fancy goods shop, but Mr Stabler kept his links with Richmond and was appointed warden of the town's Worshipful Company of Mercers, Grocers and Haberdashers, in 1966.

He returned to the north to run a small independent supermarket in Acomb, York, in 1967.

He arrived back in the Yorkshire Dales in 1969 and ran a store and post office in Bainbridge, Wensleydale.

The family moved to Askrigg, and Mr Stabler began to study for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1974, becoming curate at Rothwell, near Leeds.

He was vicar of St Mary's parish, Kelbrook, near Colne, in Lancashire, from June 1978 until his retirement in November 1979 he returned to Richmond where his brother, Cyril, owned Stabler's newsagents in the Market Place.

Cyril died in the Eighties. Mr Stabler cared for his wife through a long fight against cancer and she died in November 1986, aged 61.

Mr Stabler travelled extensively over the next 14 years and enjoyed ballroom dancing.

In 1993, his son, Adrian, returned to Richmond and lives with his wife, Amy, in the town's Bridge Street.

Mr Stabler suffered three heart attacks last year and went to Oak Mount residential care home, in Northallerton, to convalesce.

He moved to Brentwood Lodge residential home, in Leyburn, in March this year and died peacefully in his sleep at the Friarage Hospital, Northallerton, on July 22.

A funeral and service of thanksgiving will be held at St Mary's Parish Church, Richmond, on Tuesday, at 11am, followed by burial in Richmond cemetery.