Painter, draughtsman and teacher, born in Barnet, Hertfordshire. After Highgate School, Pike attended Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting, then the Royal Academy Schools. He visited Italy in the early 1930s. Pike returned to teach at Byam Shaw, became assistant art master at Dulwich College and eventually Harrow School as art master. He was dismissed after registering as a conscientious objector at the outbreak of World War II, during which he was a forester and billeting officer. Through contacts then made, Pike was invited to join the Docklands Settlement in Silvertown, in London’s East End, where he became warden of a boys’ club. Made unemployed when the Settlement closed, he became an Inland Revenue clerk, teaching evening classes and doing voluntary church work.