A SALVATION Army volunteer who spent two decades taking donations in Winchester City Centre has died aged 84.

Peter Dickinson sold the church War Cry magazine around the High Street and outside Sainsbury’s in Middle Brook Street.

He was the eldest of three children, born in 1929 and raised in Devizes, Wiltshire.

He later moved to Downton, Salisbury, and joined the local choir and bell ringers, where he met his wife-to-be, Pam. Together they moved to Cheriton, near Alresford, in 1964.

Due to moving house and a sequence of church closures Peter was, at various times, a member of the Congregational Church, the United Reform Church and the Methodists.

When the chapel at Cheriton closed in the 1980s he found his spiritual home at Winchester Salvation Army, where he enjoyed playing in the brass band.

Terry Pattison, of the Winchester Corps, said Peter braved wind and rain to sell the magazine and interacted with thousands of people.

“He was very well-known,” he said. “I remember him as a man of great integrity. He was a quiet man at times, but a marvellous gardener and somebody you could always rely on. The people of Winchester would say the same.”

Pam Dickinson said: “He was a good husband. He was very keen to do what he could in all winds and weathers. He would pass the time and be interested in what people were doing.”

Peter, who worked for a farm, a building company and as a grave digger, died suddenly in his beloved garden on October 24.

Colonel John West, who conducted the memorial, said: “For us, we recall a most loyal servant of Christ, whose ministry selling the Salvation Army papers in the town touched hundreds of people and whose faithfulness here in the Corps will be remembered by all those who walked through the doors to be met firstly by the welcome handshake of Peter Dickinson.”