Sculptor in stone, metal, wood and clay, and teacher, born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. He studied at the local School of Art, 1931–5, under R J Emerson; at Royal College of Art, 1935–8, with Richard Garbe; then was a Rome Scholar, attending British School at Rome, 1938–9. He was head of sculpture at Leicester College of Art, 1947–60, and on retirement was head of the school of fine art at Leicester Polytechnic, where he was on the staff 1960–78. Pountney was a fellow of RBS and a member of the Society of Rome Scholars. He showed at RA and elsewhere but worked mainly on commission from architects, notably in Leicestershire, where he settled at Saddington. The Royal Infirmary carries a 10-foot carving in Portland stone. Pountney believed “in the traditional training of sculptors, fast disappearing, and that sculpture is about volume and space, structure and spatial relationships, not about ideas in words.