Beatrice Fagge

Beatrice Fagge know as 'Peggy' or 'Peg' was a daughter of Dr Charles Herbert Fagge (1873-1939) and Beatrice Dora, nee Metcalfe, an Australian. click Charles & Beatrice Fagge

Dr Charles Herbert Fagge died in 1939.

Beatrice looked after her mother at Bulla Burra in Slad Lane (her parents weekend retreat) after her father's death.

Beatrice inherited Bulla Burra from her mother in 1944.

Nephew, Alistair Fagge recalls.

Extract from his year in Lacey Green as a student at Stocken Farm. For the full article click 1955 A Year at Stocken Farm                               My grand-parents had a weekend bungalow, Bulla Burra, (Aboriginal for beautiful bird; my grandmother was Australian) in Slad Lane. They used to come down from London by train and were met at Saunderton Station and taken up the hill, via Bradenham, by horse and cart, past the house where Disraeli was born and on to Lacey Green.

One of my aunts, Beatrice (Peggy) Fagge, who had looked after my grandmother after her husband had died, continued to live there.

She was a well-known character in the village.  She was an ex-Oxford University Graduate who smoked a pipe!

After leaving the army in the Second World War, she delivered the post in and around the village.

'Froma', Church Lane

The Jourdans lived at Gracefield, just across from the farm.   My pipe smoking Aunt Peg was very friendly with the Jourdans, and later moved into Church Lane, living near them in a house called ‘Froma’.    When she was away, Hans Jourdan, who had a wicked sense of humour, changed the name on her front gate to ‘Fromage’.

Miss Fagge & the Village Hall. In 1958 Ted Janes (click Ted & Jean Janes)wrote about Mrs Bateman and the Village Hall, mentioning Miss Fagge.

Extract. For the full article click 1958 Memories of Mrs Bateman

In the late 1950s my wife and I ran the Village Youth Club and I attended the Village Hall AGM to repudiate criticism that the youth were causing damage to the Hall.   I left the meeting having strongly made my point and had been elected Chairman, proposed by Mrs. M. Bateman (her husband had not yet become Sir Geoffrey).

In this new position I soon found my job not very easy.

A quartet of ladies, namely Miss Beatrice Fagge, Mrs Frederick, Miss Fletcher and Mrs Bateman had set themselves, very commendably, as custodians of the hall.   The week before a meeting, over coffee mornings and telephone conversations, the contents of an agenda would be cut and dried.

I had to be very firm and made it plain that if I was to remain chairman, things would have to be conducted a little more democratically.

Note. Miss Fagge was the Treasurer of the Village Hall Committee for twenty years or so (see obituary below)

OBITUARY of Miss Beatrice Fagge, written by Andrew Oliver and published in Hallmark in 1973.

An appreciation and some anecdotes

During the morning of August 21st 1973 there passed into the keeping of its maker the soul of Beatrice Fagge, and with it, this village lost one of its greatest champions and friends. Be assured, here was a lady who since childhood had used her unique quality of bringing together as one common brotherhood the rich and poor, arrogant and humble, wise and ignorant, skilled and unskilled that form the community of Lacey Green

When my wife, two infants and myself first moved to 'Sunnybank' 25 years ago, I knew only Harry Church and Dick West, and was well aware of the thinly veiled hostility to a 'Townie' pervading the majority of British villagers. Imagine our pleasant surprise to be visited by a purposeful lady, smoking a cherry cob, and greeting with welcome to this community, and expressing the hope that we would find contentment and happiness hereabouts.

I can, and shall always, be able to hear that deep gritty chuckle with all its sincerity to anything of a humourous nature, whilst at the same time being well aware that behind the cultured intelligent voice of Miss Fagge there was the intonation of authority so aptly borne out when one learned of her high ranking status as a driving instructress in WW11's Women's Army Auxiliary Corps.

During the years between our first meeting and today, we grew to know Miss Fagge as a great and trusted friend, a confident in times of stress, a veritable encyclopaedia of knowledge on the subjects of nature, flowers, fruits, art and country lore.

To sit in her lounge at 'Bulla Burra' and hear the anecdotes of life in Lacey Green fifty years ago was to experience a life lived to the full. When her father bought a house in the country to which he could come with his family and relax from the arduous duties of a leading London medical practitioner, life with ponies and traps was the accepted method of getting around this lovely countryside, leading up to the years at Lavender Cottage and Wimble End, during which time the car started to impinge upon all rural life.

Truly, this century's history of Lace Green could quite easily be written round the life of Beatrice Fagge and her family. Whether this good lady was in the company of the millionairess who has left us, or that great tender of the village's hedges and ditches, 'Wide-Oh', one and all were treated alike, free of all status awareness, political bias or aloofness. I recollect that after a particularly poorly attended divine service at the church, being asked by Miss Fagge "Do you think that God has been so unkind to the villagers of Lacey Green that only a handful find it a requirement to offer thanks to Him for their blessings?" Or again, when speaking of her old friend the last village milkman to deliver to cottages with bucket and measure direct to the spotless jugs at each doorstep "I know its all dreadfully unhygienic, but would you think the bacteria that came with the milk may have contributed to the tougher and hardworking manhood of the past?"

Try to think gentle reader, of anyone you know who could hold an intelligent conversation on such diverse subjects as genes and chromosones , the variation in vascular fibrous bundles of different timbers, the works of Constable and Gainsborough, and in the next breath hold forth on the County Planning authority that allows three brash houses to replace the village ale house, surrounded as it was by the indigenous flint (shades of back breaking flint picking off the fields by women and children for a penny a day) and brick cottages such as Harry Barefoot's which must have seen the dreadful upheaval and its impact on this village during the Enclosures Act, and I defy you to name the equal of Miss Fagge.

If the yardstick of leaving this world a better place than you found it is applied to this lady, I doubt if anyone who had the pleasure of knowing her will deny this requirement was met fully by the wit, happiness and love of all things, and the kindness shown by Beatrice Fagge

Her loss will be keenly felt by the Sports Club, for the last 25 years a Vice President, always taking a keen interest in the Club's activities, and giving support when required, she displayed a considerable knowledge of cricket, probably inherited from her father who played for the village many years ago.

Until an illness a few years ago she had been the Treasurer of the Village Hall Committee for at least 20 years, looking after the money with frugal care, always afraid of a 'rainy day' when the roof or the floor might fall in

A truly great lady.