Beryl Peakall (29 May 1929 - 29 Jun 2020)

In loving memory of Beryl Peakall who sadly passed away on Monday 29th June 2020, aged 91 years.

She was born in London and lived in Woodford Green, on the north east edge of Greater London. Her father had built a successful joinery and shopfitting business from scratch, and by the 1930s was doing well enough to buy a brand-new semi-detached house off-plan, with central heating, television, telephone and a large garden. They had a car and holidays every year.

When the second World War started, she was ten, and this was a traumatic time for her as her life completely changed. Her education was interrupted, which she felt deeply. She and her new baby brother Colin were evacuated to North Wales with her mother briefly, but her mother didn't like it so they went back to London, with bombs and V1 and V2 rockets. Her father was an ARP - Air Raid Precautions - warden and she must have wondered if she would see him again sometimes. She acquired a lifelong dislike of honey and rabbit meat, as her father kept bees and rabbits in the back garden to supplement rationed food. Two cousins, Molly and Sylvia, came to live with her family as well, so life was very different for her in the second half of her childhood.

In her teenage years and early twenties, she wrote to several penfriends in other countries including the Netherlands and Switzerland. She loved the Girl Guides, becoming a Guider - a leader - and loved that too. After the war she went to Pitman Secretarial College - the best, she used to proudly say - and subsequently worked in offices in London.

She met Frank and they bonded over shared politics and a mutual dislike of tea. They married in 1955, in St John's church in Buckhurst Hill, and a honeymoon baby - Jacqueline - duly came along. They bought a house in Billericay where they met some of their friends, but in a couple of years the opportunity arose for her to take over her mother's wool shop back in London. This suited her really well, as she had a flair for it, was particularly good with book-keeping, and was very efficient. She was proud, too, to have been elected the first ever woman President of the Waltham Forest Chamber of Commerce.

When they retired in 1985, Beryl and Frank moved to Norfolk, to Hempnall, where they enjoyed village life and joined in with lots of clubs and societies. A particular favourite was the Norwich-Koblenz twinning association, with trips to Germany alternating with German friends coming to the UK. A long and happy retirement was sadly ended when Frank developed lung cancer and died in 2003. Beryl was very brave, and managed living on her own, going out and about and keeping herself busy, until she felt she needed the reassurance of being near family. She moved to an annexe in her daughter's house, in Derby, in 2010. She enjoyed this, but it was for an all too brief time. She had a massive stroke in May 2011, which left her in a coma for almost three weeks. But she was a very strong person, and pulled through.

Sadly, she needed to be in a nursing home after this, and she moved into Cedar Tree Care Home in August 2011, where she lived for nine years. The care she received could not be faulted, and contributed to her surviving for so long.