David Chamberlain was born in 1936 and educated at Sherborne School (Westcott House), where he was Captain of Hockey and a prize winning swimmer and a talented musician.
In 1954 he joined the family firm leather and shoe business W.W. Chamberlain Ltd. as a 17 .5 year-old management trainee earning £4 10s a week. He worked there until he was called up for National Service at 67 Training Regiment Carlisle.
After he was commissioned David joined A Squadron of the 13th/18th Royal Hussars in Wolfenbüttel. He was a member of the Regimental hockey team.
While he was in Germany he decided to drive to Innsbruck via Paris in his 2 seater XK140 into which he fitted himself, his younger brother and Richard Stancomb plus their luggage. The 2 seater XK140 was somewhat overloaded and, unsurprisingly, the car broke an axle. It was a perilous journey.
He served for a long time as a Reservist Officer with the Northamptonshire Yeomanry with Ken Tout, the well-known military writer.
After National Service David re-joined WW Chamberlain and ended up managing 2 factories. He left in 1962.
After a stint at a small engineering firm, he became Managing Director at Kingswell’s Shoes, which was the first company in the UK to design and produce lightweight sports shoes. The firm became very successful because of the sponsorship deals which they were able to secure with Lee Trevino, Peter Lorimer, Gordon Banks and Geoffrey Boycott.
Kingswell was eventually sold to Mitre Sports. David joined the board of Mitre as Development Director and travelled extensively around the world for Mitre and Mitre USA. One of his success stories was to get Mohamed Ali to wear Mitre sports gear in a fight.
In 1979 David returned to the family firm which had been renamed Chamberlain Phipps. He soon became Chairman. He successfully fought off an unwanted takeover attempt by Wardle Storey who wanted to acquire it and strip out the assets.
After fighting off the takeover the company diversified into adhesives and, as a result, in 1989 it was bought by Evode and David decided to take early retirement.
David had a very full life away from work. In 1960 he bought a Cooper Jaguar Mark II from Michael Head (whose son became a lynch pin of Williams F1). The car had number plate HOT 95. (That same car was recently sold by Sotheby’s for just under 2 million dollars). He raced in the car at Goodwood, Brands Hatch, Snetterton and Silverstone.
1n February 1967 he found time to go down the Cresta Run both in a 4-man bobsleigh and the skeleton.
His other interests included flying light aircraft, ocean sailing (including crossings of the Atlantic) skiing, shooting, hunting and playing tennis.
David died on 8 April 2022.
Simon Morris