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Since her younger brother often walked into his local post office dressed in vintage military uniform, Pat Williams thought she was braced for all examples of his eccentric behaviour.

Ron Gittins used to practice Shakespeare in the outside toilet of his parents' Wirral home and once made the newspapers and local TV news for having painted scenes of Ancient Rome on his bedroom ceiling and walls.

But when he unexpectedly died last September and Pat entered his rented ground floor flat for the first time in years even she was astonished by what she found.

(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

From the outside, the only sign that Ron's home is any different to the other double-fronted Victorian terraces in Oxton Village is the pile of rubbish in the front yard and the dirty white blinds covering the windows.

Push open the brown wooden door though, and inside you discover an extraordinary collection of rooms with their walls, ceilings and even sometimes floors decorated with vivid murals, Egyptian hieroglyphics, underwater scenes and portraits of historic leaders.

(Image: Courtesy of Jan Williams)

And if this weren't unusual enough, in one front room a 3m-tall fireplace in the shape of a lion's head seems to roar as you enter. And across the hall, a fierce bull-shaped fireplace scowls at the stack of rubbish piled high in the bay window.

Pat, who is a former Wirral Mayor and was a Liberal Democrat councillor until she retired from politics at the age of 79, said: "When we first went inside after he died I had the shock of my life because it was absolutely full of all sorts of stuff. How he coped in there I just don't know.

"I don't appreciate all his art but what he's done is incredible. The fireplaces are extraordinary."

(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo) (Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

A boy soprano who later became a brilliant Buddy Holly impersonator, Ron showed promise as an artist from an early age and studied at the Laird School of Art in Birkenhead.

He was a powerful orator and could quote scenes from Shakespeare in a manner that would, Pat says, "give Richard Burton or Laurence Olivier a run for their money". And although he was involved in various local acting groups, she says he didn't like to take direction.

(Image: Courtesy of Jan Williams)

Pat, 82, says: "As a child he was hyperactive and very creative.

"When he was a boy he used to make little soldiers out of plasticine that were from all types of regiments and countries. The details in the uniforms were incredible.

"He used to get into trouble in school for attention seeking and being what was thought to be mischevious and a little bit naughty but I think he was just bored a lot of the time.

"Today he would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum, I'm sure of it, and be treated with much more acceptance."

(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

A month away from his 80th birthday when he died, Ron always displayed unusual behaviour but became more eccentric in his later years, turning up to Pat's 80th birthday in a thick coat, wellies, a wig and a hat "in case his head got cold".

He was a familiar sight in Oxton Village, where he would walk along the streets dressed in a series of homemade military costumes, pushing an old-fashioned pram filled with the bags of cement he used to build his gigantic fireplaces.

(Image: Courtesy of Jan Williams)

Sometimes, instead of transporting materials for use in his art, he would take another of his creations out for a stroll - a life-sized papier mache model of Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Surely rather more buxom than the original, she now sits in his kitchen next to a large portrait of Greek goddess Athena and an old microwave, oblivious to the loss of her companion.

After his death, a local family who were fond of her brother told Pat they used to shout "Ron alert" if they spotted him through the window before rushing to see what costume he was wearing.

Instead of flowers on his coffin, his sister placed two of his hats and a wig in a gesture she thought he would have enjoyed.

(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

Pat and Ron stayed in touch until his death, though their relationship was sometimes strained, partially due to his own unfulfilled political ambition.

She says: "He resented the fact that I was the eldest and a woman. He had this view that men are really the ones that should be in charge. But he was a very big supporter of Margaret Thatcher."

(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

His unpredictable nature made it difficult for Pat to include in her role as Mayor of Wirral and although she invited him into the mayoral chamber and to visit the council chamber, she felt unable to invite him to her inauguration.

When they met in the street he would greet her with arms open wide and a smile on his face, but often their conversations led to disagreements.

However, the last time they met, Ron visited Pat at home with a big bunch of flowers for her birthday - a few months late - and they had a good chat.

(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

Pat says: "I was sad that he died on his own but he didn't want everybody to know he wasn't well and he didn't want to go to hospital.

"He lived life on his own terms."

His flat is certainly proof of that - and it is now being saved by his niece Jan Williams, Pat's daughter, who is herself an artist.

At the end of his life, he cooked on a camping stove and is thought to have slept in a sleeping bag in the hall.

He had water and electricty but no gas - and consequently no central heating - because he wouldn't allow his landlord inside to make repairs in case he ended up having to leave his home.

(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

Ron rarely invited visitors into his home. Jan knows of only a few people who had stepped inside in the years before his death.

She believes this is partly because he was house-proud and didn't want friends or family to see how dilapidated his flat had become.

But art consultant Angela Samata says Ron's work is a fascinating example of 'Outsider Art' - a term used to describe work created outside the mainstream art world.

She says: "It's so important to keep this because it's not very often that we uncover these Outside Art environments that are created by an individual like Ron for their own pleasure.

"He's almost created this fantasy world. It's wonderful to hear that so few people have stepped across the threshold."

(Image: Courtesy of Jan Williams)

Through Ron's eyes, the piles of what most of us would consider to be fit only for a skip were a treasure trove of art materials.

He kept things, not for the sake of it, but because he could find a use for them in his creations.

Among the mountain of rubbish in the living room during our visit there are the skeleton of a pram, an Argos catalogue, the side of a ceramic bath, an empty two-litre pop bottle and a tiny pencil sketch of a mounted soldier.

In the back room, beneath murals of Napoleon, Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, the array of objects includes a Singer sewing machine, a photo of the Queen on horseback, an Airfix model kit of the German battleship Bismarck and a bag of marbles.

(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

In the bathroom cabinet - a packet of tooth powder and a box of lawn feed. In the other front room - a collection of homemade breast plates, a wardrobe full of military jackets and other costumes, and an almost pristine phone book from June 1999.

The task of trawling through all this to work out what is valuable and what should be thrown away has fallen to Jan and her partner Chris Teasdale, who want to preserve Ron's flat and turn it into a cultural asset for all the community.

Among their most intriguing finds are loose pages of lined A4 paper containing Ron's observations during trips to London - evidence of his claim that he worked for the Secret Service.

One page, entitled "Trip to London 1998 Nov" reads: "1. Paving stones, uneven at Russell Sq, 2. Passed Home Office, [...] 8. Charing Cross toilet, no need to pay."

Pat says: "Ron told everyone he was working for the Secret Service. Even the minister at his funeral knew all about it."

(Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)

Keen to preserve her uncle's home for artists and other people to enjoy in the future, Jan has managed to secure a lease with the building's owners, social landlord Salisbury Management Services.

Through their' artist collaboration The Caravan Gallery, she and Chris have launched a crowdfunder - "Saving Ron's Place" - to protect his legacy as an extraordinary example of Outsider Art.

They would also like to restore its former entrance, which Ron had flanked with Egyptian statues that he had eventually had to remove for safety reasons.

Pat says: "I'm sad that he didn't receive more acclaim publicly when he was alive but maybe he wanted to be discovered afterwards.

"I do think it's lovely he will be remembered for many years to come.

"We had difficult times but you couldn't help but love him."

You can back Saving Ron's Place crowdfunder HERE. Jan would love to hear people's memories and stories of Ron, and whether anyone has examples of his art work - please leave a note in the comments section if you can help her.