Mary Lawrence

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Mary Lawrence born in 1940 was the daughter of Jack & Ethel Lawrence. Click Jack & Mrs Lawrence

In 1963 Mary's mother died. By then the family smallholding and cottage of 1932 had grown to become a farm and sizeable grocery store with a Post Office. click Hill Croft and Jack & Mrs Lawrence for more about Mary's life.

The shop had been largely run by Mrs Lawrence, with the added assistance firstly of Jean and later of Mary

1970 Mary Sub-Postmistress

In 1970 Jack became ill. Mrs Lawrence had died and Jean had married and left so it was decided to reduce the shop-cum-Post Office, leaving one small extension for Mary to run and Mary was appointed Sub-Postmistress. From now on only a few useful things were stocked in the shop, including of course eggs.

1993. Congratulations to our Post Mistress, Mary Lawrence, recently honoured by the Post Office for 23 years’ service

Mary continued with her little shop and Post Office until 1997 when she decided to close it following two armed robbery attempts.

Hallmark May 1997. Report from the Organisers of the Cash Collection

There cannot be anyone in our villages who has not been affected in some way by the closure of the Post Office – just another erosion of village life – but this was all the more serious because it was brought about by some armed thug.

The general feeling in the village of sympathy and support for Mary has been overwhelming. There was a little party at the Post Office the evening before it closed. We started a collection as we thought it would be a popular idea to buy a little something to show Mary how much we appreciated her. She spent many years helping people, standing behind the counter, without a holiday or even a proper day off.

However, the response to the collection has been quite overwhelming. We opened an account at Lloyds Bank and within days the money was flowing in. The grand total exceeded £700!

It is very difficult when you start something like this to judge how everyone wants the money spent, so we consulted Mary herself. She agreed with our suggestion that we make out a cheque to her for the final amount and let her decide how and when she would like to spend it. She preferred not to have any official presentation or ceremony. We trust this is agreeable to everyone.

Mary Lawrence died in 2019. She was much loved, and greatly missed.