PETER Matson, brought up in the Wynnstay in Britain, came from a family steeped in hunting.

His father, mother and brother have all been masters of the famed pack, hunting a country on the Welsh/English border near Chester.

It wasn’t hunting that brought him to Limerick in the early 1970s but business.

He set up Scanglo International, an engineering firm making radiator valves which, at its peak, employed almost 200 people in Newcastlewest. However, it was Limerick that re-ignited his love of hunting. On his first day out, on a horse of John McNamara’s from Croom, he finished almost alone after a 10-mile point with the “Counties”.

Peter was hooked and it wasn’t too long before he had bought himself four proper hunters, which he kept in livery with the late Joe (Gentleman Joe) Hogan. When not hunting he evented, rode with dash in bank races and became treasurer of the County Limerick Hunt.

Meanwhile the firm prospered, exporting all over the world, with Peter driving an E-type Jag for short journeys while he flew his Piper Cherokee if he had to venture further afield.

Around that time he was joined for a short Limerick sojourn by his sister Liz who never left, as she married Frank Barry and became a lifelong member of the County Limerick as well as setting up Manister House Stud. In 1976 Peter sold Scanglo and bought Lough Gur House complete with its prize Hereford herd.

He moved his hunters to his new home and employed Pakie Donoghue as stud groom. In business, he took over Fannin’s surgical suppliers, then based in Grafton St.

With his friend Richard Milner, the world renowned Hereford breeder, he went to judge at La Exposición Rural in Argentina, the largest agricultural show in the southern hemisphere.

Bur Peter always had itchy feet and sold his Irish interests and moved to the USA where he married Barbara Kniper in 1984. Always an entrepreneur, he opened Dental Care of America in Florida which he ran successfully for many years. In later years, he again sold out and Barbara and he opened an antique shop.

He died at his home in Florida on April 15th, 2021 after a fall and short illness. His friend and legal adviser from his Limerick days, Bill Leahy, summed him up, saying: “Peter had no enemies but very many friends.”

Bill isn’t alone in having happy memories of Peter, this larger than life character who brightened our lives.

To his family, his wife Barbara, children Adam and Ivanna, sisters Liz Barry and Diana Rusher (UK), we send our sympathies, he will be missed. May he rest in peace.

DP