TRIBUTES have been paid to a family doctor and sportsman who has died aged 84.

Successive Bishops of Durham have been among the thousands of patients cared for by Dr Tony Ferguson in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, during a career spanning almost 40 years.

Dr Ferguson also captained the town's golf club, led Bishop Auckland Cricket Club's second team and was a keen rugby player.

He served as president of the Newcastle and Northern Counties Medical Society, was a founder member of the Durham and Newcastle Medical Graduates' Society and a Fellow of the Royal College of GPs from 1978.

Dr Ferguson was the fourth generation of his family to join the medical profession, graduating from King's College, Durham, at Newcastle in 1944 and going straight into war service with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as surgeon lieutenant with the British Pacific Fleet.

In 1947, he joined his father Dr Tom Entwhistle Ferguson's Braeside practice, which was then in the Market Place, later moving to Cockton Hill and Escomb Road, where it is now based at the Station View medical centre.

The pioneering partnership, which included Dr Donald Prescott, was the first training practice in the town.

Dr Ferguson wrote a history of the practice in 1979 and published a history of medicine in south-west Durham in 1989, three years after his retirement.

He was chairman of the restoration committee at St Andrew's Church, which raised £750,000 between 1984 and 1992.

He was a founder member of the Bishop Auckland Probus Club, an honorary Rotarian and chairman of the Friends of Auckland Castle until last December.

A committed family man, he was proud of the achievements of his wife Pamela - who was awarded an MBE in 2001 - and his children Michael and Jane.

Michael is professor of molecular parasitology at Dundee and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Jane Howarth, a graduate in Chinese, was one of the first female Lloyds' brokers. She said: "My father had an extraordinary zest for life. He was enormously kind and interested in people."

Dr Ian Robertson, senior partner at Station View, said: "He was an outstanding family doctor. He was a very kind and careful clinician who had a deep knowledge and understanding of his patients.

"He was viewed by his medical colleagues and patients alike with deep affection and respect and we will all miss him greatly."

Dr Colin Waine, a former partner of Dr Ferguson's and a former chairman of the Royal College of GPs, read a tribute at a service of thanksgiving at St Andrew's on Friday.