Prolific sculptor and painter who established a strong reputation in the Tyneside area. He often used waste materials and said that he saw “only extremes of either beauty or ugliness.” Gofton began spare-time sculpting and painting while a shot-blaster. When he became a marine engineer he was able to organise his work so that he could spend half his time on artworks. His ciment fondu figure Dolly Peel, an early nineteenth-century fishwife and smuggler, is sited at River Drive, South Shields.