Difference between revisions of "Joan West"

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25th May 1939 - 4th September 2026
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[[File:Joan West Portrait.jpg|thumb]]
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'''“Tribute to our Mum”'''
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'''Written and read by Richard West at the Joan West Memorial Service'''
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'''held on Friday 9<sup>th</sup> October 2026 at St John’s Church, Lacey Green'''
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"Mum was born in May 1939. First daughter to Len and Mattie Gillingwater. They were market gardeners and pioneer Landrace pig breeders living at Deanfield in the valley below Bledlow Ridge. Molly completed the family a few years later, they lived in a Nissan hut until Mum was 12 and then moved into a house that Len built.
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Mum went to school at Ladymead where she used to play the piano at assemblies and she enjoyed fencing, tennis and Ballet. She left after o levels, with her father keen for her to join the business, she worked in their greengrocer shop that they owned in Princes Risborough, where the aga shop is now, selling their produce.
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In her early 20s a significant event happened. While attending Wycombe Agricultural show her and my father’s eyes met, over the pig pens. He always was a good judge of stock.
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They married at St. Marys in Princes Risborough in 1961. They then lived at 1 Stocken Cottages in Kiln Lane. Before long came Trisha then Caroline and a few years later I arrived. In 1970 we moved into the half-renovated Farmhouse as Dick and Hilda had moved to their new bungalow.
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They lived at the farmhouse for nearly 40 years, before moving to Arcadia. Mum was involved in helping run the farm, doing the paperwork, chasing escapee cows, selling eggs, providing staff packed teas in the summer, providing cooked lunch for about a dozen people for most of December when turkey season team were in, and allocating turkeys that never weighed what customers had ordered, putting up various long term guests throughout the years some elderly relatives, some children of friends who became lifetime friends of our family.
 +
 +
 +
Mum was good at sorting problems like being diplomatic on the phone to members of the public that didn’t enjoy the noise or smell of farming. She often solved problems, with inspired ideas like the Egg-o-meter. We had a surplus of pullet eggs, I was in the Cubs and we needed some funds. Her idea involved a wheel of fortune that with a turn of the wheel a number was landed on to see how many eggs you won. The Cubs pulled the trolly with the Egg-o-meter on it around the village knocking on doors and encouraging residents to play the game, 50 p a go. Two problems solved.
 +
 +
 +
For a number of years, she provided the lunches for the Chiltern Hills Ploughing match, a hot meal in the middle of a field for 30 plus people, she loved a challenge and she loved doing it well.
 +
 +
 +
At one point I wasn’t seeing eye to eye with my maths teacher, next thing I know... I couldn’t believe it… she invited him for tea, and I was to show him around the farm. It did seem to help.
 +
 +
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The Lacey Green Players put on an annual production for several nights for a number of years in our barn. We would have an extra show for the farm that she would sell tickets for charity, sometimes including a dinner. She loved organising events to raise funds for charities. Another memorable one was a fashion parade which involved anyone unfortunate enough to turn up when she was organising it.  This involved dressing up in fancy dress and parading on a catwalk in front of dinner guests. Some of you are here today, I think Tarzan is here and I know Jane is.  Another memorable event was my Dad’s 70th guests. the village hall, which included a screen broadcasting the JR West News, read by Brian Panter! How did she think of it?
 +
 +
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Another idea that Mum had to take credit for was the Lacey Green Maize Maze, the family suspicious at first got behind the idea and it ran for 10 years from 2000 to 2010 making an attraction that was popular and well supported.
 +
 +
 +
She really did serve Lacey Green. She organised the church flowers here at St. Johns for a number of years, she came up with the idea of the scout hut in Highwood Bottom, and made it happen, and one year we held a Cub Scout Jamboree in the front field. She also designed the float involving the combine for the procession around the village to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.
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 +
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She was a Governor at the school, and President of the sports club, getting the club house improved which enabled the playschool to use it, and challenging the club to cricket matches against the Presidents 11. She wrote in Hallmark, the village magazine from 1976 for nearly 45 years, which was originally bi-monthly publication. She organised the last village day in 2000, bringing all the village associations together.
 +
 +
 +
Mum supported and encouraged the Young Farmers in many ways and was a public speaking judge for a few years a role she enjoyed and found rewarding.
 +
 +
 +
She has always loved Local History. In recent years she set up the Lacey green wiki which has much of her research recorded. You can see her promotion for this on the back of the order of service, please take a look.
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 +
 +
So many public facing things… I guess some of you will remember some of them, but above all she was our Mother, kind, fun and supportive. Nurturing and guiding.  Always there!
 +
 +
 +
Mum now is at rest with Dad. Thank you for everything".
 +
 +
________
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 +
 +
Click [[John & Joan West]] for more about Joan and her life story with husband John.
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 +
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'''PROFILE''' - '''Taken from the Local History Group website, written by Rosemary Mortham'''
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 +
Joan West was one of the first writers and researchers of the Local History Group of Lacey Green and Loosley Row.  She has recently retired from being a farmer's wife at Stocken Farm.  In 1971, while stripping out the 17th century farmhouse, she began to wonder exactly when it was built.  She has yet to find the answer, but in tracing back through owners and tenants she became interested in the village families.  The study of the school logbook led to the publication of her book "A Chiltern Village School"
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 +
Witnessing the decline of the old village families and often seeing critical information relating to the villages destroyed on bonfires, made her spring into action.  She began to collect and make copies of photographs and deeds.  She is grateful for the generosity of those she approached for the loan of these important pieces of history.
 +
 +
Local history became a hobby, which could easily become an obsession, but she says she just doesn't have the time!
 +
 +
'''Research and Articles''' by Joan see below
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 +
'''1949 Saunderton Station Recalled'''.  Describes sending her prize winning bantams to National Poultry Shows from [[Saunderton Station]]
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[[1961 Social Snapshot by Joan West (Autobiography)|'''1961 Social Snapshot by Joan West (Autobiography)''']]
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'''[[John West]]  obituary'''
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'''[[Arthur & Joyce Waite]]  biography'''
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{{Person
 
{{Person
 
|Forename=Joan
 
|Forename=Joan
 
|Surname=West
 
|Surname=West
 
|Sex=Female
 
|Sex=Female
−
|Birth date=1939
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|Year of Birth=1939
 
|Partner=John West
 
|Partner=John West
 
|Father=Len Gillingwater
 
|Father=Len Gillingwater
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|PositionsHeld=Hallmark Editor
 
|PositionsHeld=Hallmark Editor
 
|Family=West Family
 
|Family=West Family
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|Birth date=1939
 
|SocialSnapShotYear=1961
 
|SocialSnapShotYear=1961
 
}}
 
}}
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In September 1961  I married John West, who had been born and now worked with his father at Stocken farm in Lacey Green.    We moved into no.1 Coronation Cottages, one of a pair of houses in Kiln Lane built for the farm workers by the landlord in 1937 – hence the name.    I’ve no doubt it was modern for it’s day.  For instance, it had a bathroom.  Mains water had only come to the village in 1934.  There was a sink in the kitchen and a cesspool in the garden to take the waste.    The main drains were not laid in the village until about 1970, so every house had to call in the cesspool emptying lorry from time to time.
 
  
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In the front door.  Stairs up straight ahead, beside a short passage through to the kitchen and on the right a small sitting room and a living room.  The kitchen was not big.  Narrow, with on one side a copper boiler to heat the water which had a fire underneath.  Next, a sink and wooden draining board and an electric cooker.  There was a cupboard under the sink and that was it.    Cooking must have been prepared in the living room, for there was a walk-in larder in there and room for a small table and chairs.  A fireplace with a built in cupboard floor to ceiling beside it and room for some easy chairs.    The bathroom and three bedrooms upstairs.    The paintwork had not been changed much since it was built.  All the woodwork was still the original, then fashionable, matt brown.  The green painted walls had been livened up in places with a pink potato-cut pattern, or was it the other way round?  Anyway we papered over it.
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note. Joan is mentioned in the biography of [[Dennis Claydon]]
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We took out the old fireplace in the living room and replaced it with a new one with a back boiler to heat the water.  This let us knock out the big copper boiler with it’s fire from the kitchen.  We had been given a dated washing machine which just fitted in the space and put a worktop over it joining up with a new stainless steel sink and drainer and an up to date electric cooker.    It was like a mini galley.  There was no garage but that didn’t matter because we didn’t have a car.
 
  
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I had worked full time in my father’s business.  Now I was a full time housewife and I had a lot to learn.  John started work at six am and came back at 8 for twenty minutes for a cooked breakfast.  The main meal was at 12 o’clock when the farm stopped for lunch for an hour.  Five o’clock brought John home for a quick, full, old-fashioned tea, or if anyone was working in the fields a picnic tea was taken to them.    Supper, usually something hot was eaten around 9pm.  This gave  me plenty of opportunity to practise my culinary skills which were very basic at first but increased rapidly – they needed to.    I enjoyed needlework and changed from dressmaking to curtains and upholstery.
 
  
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All  that cooking needed ingredients but getting them was not difficult.  The fishman, Mr.Harper called on Tuesdays, so fish and chips was supper on Tuesdays.  A butcher called twice a week from Stevens in Prestwood.  I can’t remember the man’s name but he was very saucy.  I had the time to cook the cheaper cuts that needed long slow cooking but asking him for a piece of skirt or a breast of lamb took a lot of bravery.  Then there were Bert and May Dell at Hickman’s Stores.    They stocked all I needed and I collected my bread from them four times a week.  They also sold petrol and paraffin which we needed for a convector heater that we stood in our hall in the winter.  “ Bert’s” was a wonderful place to get to know people.  At first it seemed that everyone in there knew everybody else.  And they probably did.  But Bert and May always had a word for everyone and all were included.  They were first class village shopkeepers to my mind and a great help to me in feeling at home here.
 
  
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The farm was just behind our house across the field.  The cows were taken past the side of our garden into Kiln Lane, down as far as the cross tracks and left into a field called Hillocks to graze.    Then they were brought back again at milking time.    That was a daily occurance but less often cattle and the flock of sheep were driven around the village or along to Walters Ash on the New Road.  There was not so much traffic then.
 
  
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It was not unusual for the village to be cut off with snow in the winter.   Gerald Bedford who worked at the farm lived in Naphill.   He would go home on a tractor and in the morning clear stuck cars from the New Road on his way back.   The snow would blow against the fences and hedges and drop the other side blocking the roads.   Then the council took to erecting snow barriers some way in the fields so the snow dropped over them and thus it piled up in the fields.   Side roads such as Slad Lane however could be filled to the top.  It is already some years ago that the council no longer deemed it necessary to put up those snow barriers.  The bus from Wycombe only ever came as far as the RAF camp at Walters Ash.   That was the Lacey Green stop.   In snowy weather a snow plough cleared to there, turning and throwing a bank of extra snow across New Road  just to make sure we were inaccessible.
 
  
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[[File:Joan West.jpg|left|500x500px|thumb]]The village was pretty self sufficient.  The Stores of course and along at Loosley Row, opposite the Whip was the Post Office.      The district nurse, who delivered the babies lived in Greenlands and a doctor held a weekly surgery in Bill and Phyllis Dell’s House.  The policeman lived in a house on the Main Road.    There was  a road sweeper, “Wido” Bowler, to keep it nice, sything the grass verges as well.    If he got a little weary he would sit in his barrow and take a nap.  In 1961 Joyce Delnevo was just getting her baby Louise to walk  to the village shop. Our daughters and Louise became good friends.  Joyce was a great help to me and someone I could always turn to.    Many village schools were being closed down at that time but Lacey Green was chosen to stay.    If it had closed Lacey green would be a very different place.  As it was, our children made close friendships there and I met many more people.  In 1969 our son Richard was born.  John’s mother was not in good health and they built a bungalow for her and Dick.  In January 1970 we moved to the farmhouse.    I couldn’t have had a better start in Lacey Green.
 
  
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[[File:Joan West.jpg|left|500x500px|thumb]]
 
[[Category:West Family]]
 
[[Category:West Family]]

Latest revision as of 16:44, 11 October 2026

25th May 1939 - 4th September 2026

Joan West Portrait.jpg


“Tribute to our Mum”

Written and read by Richard West at the Joan West Memorial Service

held on Friday 9th October 2026 at St John’s Church, Lacey Green


"Mum was born in May 1939. First daughter to Len and Mattie Gillingwater. They were market gardeners and pioneer Landrace pig breeders living at Deanfield in the valley below Bledlow Ridge. Molly completed the family a few years later, they lived in a Nissan hut until Mum was 12 and then moved into a house that Len built.


Mum went to school at Ladymead where she used to play the piano at assemblies and she enjoyed fencing, tennis and Ballet. She left after o levels, with her father keen for her to join the business, she worked in their greengrocer shop that they owned in Princes Risborough, where the aga shop is now, selling their produce.


In her early 20s a significant event happened. While attending Wycombe Agricultural show her and my father’s eyes met, over the pig pens. He always was a good judge of stock.


They married at St. Marys in Princes Risborough in 1961. They then lived at 1 Stocken Cottages in Kiln Lane. Before long came Trisha then Caroline and a few years later I arrived. In 1970 we moved into the half-renovated Farmhouse as Dick and Hilda had moved to their new bungalow.


They lived at the farmhouse for nearly 40 years, before moving to Arcadia. Mum was involved in helping run the farm, doing the paperwork, chasing escapee cows, selling eggs, providing staff packed teas in the summer, providing cooked lunch for about a dozen people for most of December when turkey season team were in, and allocating turkeys that never weighed what customers had ordered, putting up various long term guests throughout the years some elderly relatives, some children of friends who became lifetime friends of our family.


Mum was good at sorting problems like being diplomatic on the phone to members of the public that didn’t enjoy the noise or smell of farming. She often solved problems, with inspired ideas like the Egg-o-meter. We had a surplus of pullet eggs, I was in the Cubs and we needed some funds. Her idea involved a wheel of fortune that with a turn of the wheel a number was landed on to see how many eggs you won. The Cubs pulled the trolly with the Egg-o-meter on it around the village knocking on doors and encouraging residents to play the game, 50 p a go. Two problems solved.


For a number of years, she provided the lunches for the Chiltern Hills Ploughing match, a hot meal in the middle of a field for 30 plus people, she loved a challenge and she loved doing it well.


At one point I wasn’t seeing eye to eye with my maths teacher, next thing I know... I couldn’t believe it… she invited him for tea, and I was to show him around the farm. It did seem to help.


The Lacey Green Players put on an annual production for several nights for a number of years in our barn. We would have an extra show for the farm that she would sell tickets for charity, sometimes including a dinner. She loved organising events to raise funds for charities. Another memorable one was a fashion parade which involved anyone unfortunate enough to turn up when she was organising it.  This involved dressing up in fancy dress and parading on a catwalk in front of dinner guests. Some of you are here today, I think Tarzan is here and I know Jane is.  Another memorable event was my Dad’s 70th guests. the village hall, which included a screen broadcasting the JR West News, read by Brian Panter! How did she think of it?


Another idea that Mum had to take credit for was the Lacey Green Maize Maze, the family suspicious at first got behind the idea and it ran for 10 years from 2000 to 2010 making an attraction that was popular and well supported.


She really did serve Lacey Green. She organised the church flowers here at St. Johns for a number of years, she came up with the idea of the scout hut in Highwood Bottom, and made it happen, and one year we held a Cub Scout Jamboree in the front field. She also designed the float involving the combine for the procession around the village to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.


She was a Governor at the school, and President of the sports club, getting the club house improved which enabled the playschool to use it, and challenging the club to cricket matches against the Presidents 11. She wrote in Hallmark, the village magazine from 1976 for nearly 45 years, which was originally bi-monthly publication. She organised the last village day in 2000, bringing all the village associations together.


Mum supported and encouraged the Young Farmers in many ways and was a public speaking judge for a few years a role she enjoyed and found rewarding.


She has always loved Local History. In recent years she set up the Lacey green wiki which has much of her research recorded. You can see her promotion for this on the back of the order of service, please take a look.


So many public facing things… I guess some of you will remember some of them, but above all she was our Mother, kind, fun and supportive. Nurturing and guiding.  Always there!


Mum now is at rest with Dad. Thank you for everything".

________


Click John & Joan West for more about Joan and her life story with husband John.


PROFILE - Taken from the Local History Group website, written by Rosemary Mortham

Joan West was one of the first writers and researchers of the Local History Group of Lacey Green and Loosley Row. She has recently retired from being a farmer's wife at Stocken Farm. In 1971, while stripping out the 17th century farmhouse, she began to wonder exactly when it was built. She has yet to find the answer, but in tracing back through owners and tenants she became interested in the village families. The study of the school logbook led to the publication of her book "A Chiltern Village School"

Witnessing the decline of the old village families and often seeing critical information relating to the villages destroyed on bonfires, made her spring into action. She began to collect and make copies of photographs and deeds. She is grateful for the generosity of those she approached for the loan of these important pieces of history.

Local history became a hobby, which could easily become an obsession, but she says she just doesn't have the time!

Research and Articles by Joan see below

1949 Saunderton Station Recalled. Describes sending her prize winning bantams to National Poultry Shows from Saunderton Station

1961 Social Snapshot by Joan West (Autobiography)

John West obituary

Arthur & Joyce Waite biography


note. Joan is mentioned in the biography of Dennis Claydon






Joan West.jpg
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