Beatrice Fagge

Beatrice Fagge was a daughter of Charles Herbert Fagge (1873-1939) and Beatrice Dora, nee Metcalfe, an Australian. They had built a weekend cottage in Slad Lane which they called 'Bulla Burra', aboriginal for 'beautiful bird'. Daughter Beatrice looked after her mother here after her father had died, inheriting it in 1944.

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 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.