Village news Mary Woodcock
Village news Mary Woodcock
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Melbourn Mobile Warden Scheme to take over Lunch Club!
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Melbourn Bloomsday Festival
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New Melbourn Singers
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Melbourn Library
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Melbourn & Meldreth Women’s Group
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Volunteering at The Hub
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The hall for all
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Melbourn Village Fete and Music on the Moor
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LOST Gold ring with 3 Sapphires Tuesday evening, 19th July 2016 The ring was lost somewhere between 52 The Moor, the Church car park and the Church. If found please contact 01763 260759. Thank you.
Mary Woodcock, was well known in Melbourn, and at the successful Coffee Stop held on Saturday mornings in All Saints' Community Hall which started at her initiative. Mary was also involved with the Melbourn magazine for many years. Sadly Mary died on the morning of Saturday 23rd July and was buried in Wigan on Wednesday 3rd August. Mary was born at home in Blackheath, London on 22nd March, 1930. Her father worked for the Westminster Bank and the family was moved round the London region as he gained promotion. His last move came in early 1939 when he became Manager of the Gravesend branch. Gravesend was rightly designated as a Danger Area, and Mary was sent to school in Winchester , seen as relatively safe. She stayed there until she was eighteen when she took the entrance exam to Girton College, Cambridge which told her to try again in 1949. She decided not to and applied to Durham University to study mathematics. She was the only girl in her year taking this subject. She graduated in 1951 and went on to Hughes Hall, Cambridge where she qualified as a teacher. Her first job was at Huyton College, Liverpool where she stayed for four years. In 1954, she married Peter Woodcock who had been at Durham and had a chemistry degree. His employer moved him to their headquarters in Birmingham. Their first child, Geoffrey, was born in Stourbridge and Joanna, Helen and Ian arrived in Coulsdon and Bishops Stortford. Mary returned to teaching in 1971 entirely by chance. She was given to understand that the local Catholic Independent school was looking for a maths teacher. Eventually, she was persuaded to phone the Head who invited her for interview. He suggested that she should arrive about 9.30, having seen her children off to school. She should teach three or four lessons, stay for lunch and then return home in time for her children's return. Thus started her career at St. Edmund's College, Ware which lasted for twenty three years. For personal reasons, the family moved to Hertford in 1978 and then to Melbourn in 1990. Mary retired in 1994 and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and Vascular Dementia in 2010. melbournmagazine
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