PRESTBURY chef Peter Land – a professional of international acclaim – lay dead in a bedroom for up to four weeks before his body was finally discovered, an inquest heard.
Police were alerted to his home in Hawthorn Street, Wilmslow, when a neighbour became concerned that she had not seen Mr Land for about a month.
Officers broke into the house on July 3 and found Mr Land, who worked at the Bridge Hotel, dressed in his pyjama bottoms slumped at the foot of the bed.
Deputy coroner Dr Janet Napier recorded a verdict of death by natural causes with heart attack or coronary heart disease as the probable cause.In summing up she said Mr Land, 60, an international chef who had worked in some of Europe’s best restaurants had "lost the focus" of his life in recent years.
Dr Napier told the inquest at Macclesfield Town Hall: "He gave a lot of people a lot of pleasure. He was extremely good at his job.But obviously he let himself go with the sad history of his divorce and the death of his elderly aunt. He lost his two focuses."
Elaine Grange, friend and long-term employer at The Bridge Hotel, paid tribute to Mr Land’s long career in the hospitality industry.
She told the inquest he had been a "lifelong smoker and drinker" and his health had deteriorated following the break up of his marriage and the death of his aunt.
She said: "He was a very private person, he wasn’t very outgoing or gregarious; he was quite happy with his lot. He was devastated when his wife left him. He also had an aunt who lived in Ormskirk and when she died he had nobody left at all. He went to pieces."
In a letter from Maureen Bond, his former wife, she said they married in 1974 and had run Robinson’s Off Licence together for five years before their separation in 1995. They had one daughter.
The inquest was told that Mr Land trained as a chef and worked in Geneva, Berlin and Spain and was fluent in German, French and Spanish, before working in numerous hotels in the UK, including the former Bull’s Head in Mottram St Andrew.
PC Lawrence Miveld, special investigations officer, told the coroner how officers forced entry into Mr Land’s home after repeatedly knocking at the door. He said there was a pile of mail behind the door – the earliest date being the end of May.
Mr Land was employed by Elaine Grange in 1990 to oversee an extension to the banqueting suite at the Bridge Hotel in Prestbury, but due to the deterioration of his health he was reinstated as a waiter in 2002.
Elaine told the inquest: "Peter was known to us prior to that so he came and set it all up for us. He was excellent at his job. He was a lovely person, he was very nice. But he put on an awful lot of weight going up to 20 stone. He will be sadly missed. He was highly thought of by us all."
