East Hampshire has lost one of its finest storytellers as the founder of Selborne’s Romany Folklore Museum has died just 11 days short of his 82nd birthday.

The museum may have closed in 1995, but Stretton Peter Ingrim’s knowledge and work will continue to live on in the books he wrote, the tales he told and the wagons and vardos he restored or created from scratch.

Nina Taylor, a long-time friend of Peter’s, said: “Born in Worcestershire, Peter was first and foremost an extraordinary story teller.

“One could happily while away many an hour in his good company, listening to his Welsh Borders way of talking as he reminisced about the ‘old days’ of travelling Romani folk.”

Over the years he welcomed visitors from around the world into his Romany Folklore Museum, opened in 1976, and his workshop in Limes End Yard in Selborne.

Here he built many a living wagon or vardo from scratch or restored them to their former glory, with his clients including a member of Pink Floyd who commissioned a vardo.

Nina first met Peter in 1970, when searching for an authentic Queenie stove for a Bow Top wagon.

She said: “Peter duly put us in touch with Mervyn Jones in Holywell, Flintshire, and that stove kept us warm on our travels in Kent, Essex and in Eire.

“We kept in touch and, in October 2023, Peter modestly showed me the Bow Top he and Mervyn had built with expertly chamfered and carved details, beautiful ‘lined out’ with traditional scroll work designs. Its owner having passed away, when offered first refusal, Peter rustled up sufficient ‘vonger’ to buy it back and move it back into his yard, lovingly opening and closing its ‘stable doors’ each morning and evening respectively.”

After he closed the museum he travelled extensively, collecting tales and artefacts along the way, and completing, in 2005 in Oregon, a last commission as a renowned ‘Builder, Restorer and Decorator of Living Wagons’.

Back in Selborne he co-authored Romany Relics – The Wagon Album published by John Barker in 2010, and Wagtail’s Tale in 2014.

His daughter, Nancy, gave him a ukulele to accompany himself singing old travellers’ favourites and by chance he came across a fiddle purported to have been owned by Gypsy fiddler, John Lock.

Peter recorded Old Fiddle Tunes & Sentimental Songs of Welsh Border Gypsies with Cath Watkins on fiddle and played live with Nina’s band Cajunologie. He was invited to appear on stage at Sidmouth Festival and in 2016 at the Eisteddfod in Abergavenny, celebrating 200 years since the birth of Welsh harpist Gypsy John Roberts. He died on January 7.

Nina concluded: “Peter will be sorely missed by those of us who have listened to his tales either outdoors besides his ‘yog’, kettle on, ready to pour a cup of strong tea or inside the cabin he built as on that last visit, a rum and coke suitably warmed by his wood stove and his voice chasing away the Autumn chills. Kushti Bokh!”