Marie Allen (13 Feb 1928 - 24 Aug 2016)

In loving memory of our mother, Marie Allen who sadly passed away on 24th August 2016.

In lieu of flowers the family would like donations to be made to All Saints Church, Paston, where the funeral is to be held. Marie's ashes will be placed in the Garden of Remembrance in the church grounds. If you would like to make a donation you can use the following link: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/Marie-Allen-In-Memory?utm_id=2&utm_term=GVDw6Vv42.

Marie was born in Swansea on 13 February 1928, the fifth of six children of Reginald and Eleanor Savage. Her father Reg, a dock worker, died when Marie was five and she and her five siblings were brought up by their mother, who supplemented her income by running a small retail business from home and by playing the piano in the local cinema.

In February 1941 Marie lived through three days of intensive Luftwaffe bombing during which 230 people were killed, the old centre of Swansea was destroyed and Marie and her family were bombed out of their house in The Hafod district. After leaving school at 14 Marie was active in the local Youth Club movement and the Amateur Dramatic Society based at the newly opened St Thomas Community Centre, which was funded in part by contributions from the Friends of America as a thank you for accommodating US service personnel in the Eastside community during the Second World War.

In 1942 Marie started work as a cashier in Audrey's dress shop in Swansea, and continued working in fashion retail both in Swansea and Peterborough until 1969. Interspersed with this she had two spells working as a clippie on the Swansea buses and the Mumbles railway. She was also a part time member of the Women’s Royal Army Corp (WRAC) for about two years from 1951 during which time she travelled to Catterick for training as a lorry driver! Her final job before retiring in 1986 was with Hotpoint as a Purchase Accounts Supervisor.

In 1951 a chance encounter on a Swansea bus, a laddered stocking and a handsome bus conductor, was to lead to marriage, seven children and eventually a move to Peterborough. Marie caught her stocking on something sharp in a bus and complained to the conductor who took down her particulars and next day turned up at her home with a pair of new stockings. Of course, the conductor was none other than John Forrest Allen (known as Forrest to his parents and siblings but always as Jack to Marie), recently discharged from a sanatorium recovering from the TB he had contracted whilst serving on a Royal Navy Minesweeper during the war. After such a romantic beginning love soon blossomed and the pair were married on 26 July 1952.

Jack retrained as an instrument maker and when his work took him to Peterborough it became the permanent home for him and Marie and the entire family. A win on the football pools then enable Marie and Jack to move from rented accommodation into their own home at 36 Paston Lane, where they were to live with their children until 1986. Jack and Marie had seven children together, Eleanor, Jonathan, Anthony, Amanda Jane, Teresa, Timothy and Richard. Timothy, Teresa's twin brother, tragically died in October 1962.

Jack died in February 2001, eighteen months before what would have been their Golden Wedding.

Marie is survived by her six children, six grandchildren Ben, Daniel, James, Bryn, Matthew and Sam, and five great-grandchildren, Evie, Allysha, Connor, Blake and Leo.