Although a successful chartered building surveyor, my friend John Rodgers, who has died aged 61, always wanted to be a writer. He would often bemoan his fate to walk this earth sorting out party-wall disputes and flying freeholds instead of writing full-time. He tried to compensate by producing voluminous work over the years: short stories, meditations, poetry and historical criticism.

Last year his ship finally came in, when, aged 60, he was accepted on to a full-time MA in creative writing at University College Cork. He embraced it fully, so it was terrible for him to be robbed of this chance by cancer.

John was born in Newry, County Down, one of eight children, to Bridie (nee McParland) and Bill Rodgers. His father was a train driver and his mother a hospital ancillary worker. In Newry he was educated at Abbey grammar school and Newry Tech and then at Southampton and Ulster polytechnics, taking up jobs in the building industry before settling on surveying. He spent the next 35-odd years in the profession in London, working mainly as a sole practitioner. He was an ardent Arsenal fan.

In 1988 John married Brenda Maddock, whom he met while working at the Notting Hill Housing Trust (now Notting Hill Genesis) in London. They had a son, Fionn, but the couple eventually divorced and he met his new partner, Linda Hyldgaard, a textile designer from Denmark, in 2008. They enjoyed a happy relationship until her death in 2014, after which it took John a while to regain some purpose.

He decided to move to Rostrevor in Co Down, where he found himself at the centre of a new social circle, whose easy acceptance of him and encouragement of his literary gifts gave him the incentive to finally scratch his itch. In Cork he tapped into a rich hinterland of experience, which, under careful tuition and peer approval, began to bear fruit. A collection of his writings will be published this year.

John is survived by Fionn and by three sisters and two brothers.