A man who witnessed the bombing of a German aircraft over Britain in World War One, and whose anti-vandal lights adorn Britain’s railways, has died aged 104.

Arthur Cumper, an entrepreneur from Walton, died from heart failure and infection last month.

His son David said: “He was a loving, caring parent. And paranoid in the sense that even now, if he was still here, when I came back from holiday the first thing I or my brother would do is to phone him, even now he would have been worried.”

Mr Cumper started the company Designplan Lighting at the age of 55. He invented lighting covers that bottles and bricks would bounce off as part of an anti-vandalism campaign.

The company became one of the UK’s most successful vandal and weather lighting companies and it held the contracts for prisons and railways across the country.

David said: “He was a workaholic, but he had a romantic side as well. Although he worked all his life, and I can remember seeing the kitchen table covered with papers, he met my mother on April 24, 1948, and asked her out to the pub, and kept the little receipt from the pub in his wallet until the day he died.

“On every April 24 he gave my mum 12 red roses, because that is what he gave her on their first date.”

Mr Cumper witnessed the shooting of Zeppelin Schutte-Lanz SL11 by William Leefe Robinson on September 2, 1916. It was the first time a British pilot had shot down an airship over Britain.

David claims it is almost certain his father was the last remaining witness to this event.

Mr Cumper was a fan of reading and took up book binding when he retired.

David added: “He was energetic with a sharp brain to the last, driving until he was 102.”

Mr Cumper leaves behind wife Gwen, sons David and Michael, daughter Anne, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.