Barbara Marie Winter (3 Sep 1926 - 8 Sep 2022)

In loving memory of Barbara Marie Winter who sadly passed away on 8th September 2022.

Barbara was born on 3rd September 1926, the oldest of three daughters of Geoffrey and Dorothy (known as Doll) Gamble.

Much of her childhood, with sisters Margaret and Jen, was spent in Burton Joyce in Nottinghamshire, but the family also spent a period of time in Woodhouse Eaves in Leicestershire, where her father was sent to expand the family’s agricultural merchant’s business.

Barbara attended the primary school in Lambley, then passed the entrance exam to go to Brincliffe School for Girls in Nottingham. It was on her 13th birthday – 3rd September 1939 – that war was declared. Her father joined the army and spent much of the war in India.

Barbara left school to start work; one of her jobs was as a nursery nurse in a residential nursery attached to a munitions factory in Leicester, where mothers who were needed to work in the factories while the men were away, could leave their babies and pre-school children while they worked. This was a live-in post for Barbara, and she often described the infestation of mice in the nurses’ dormitory, where the mice would run across beds, pillows and sometimes faces during the night.

Barbara and Ron met at a local dance after the war; he recalled spotting her as she walked in, impressed by the way she wore her cardigan over her shoulders, recognising immediately – he always told us - a woman with class!

They married in the registry office on 30th July 1949, neither of them wanting the fuss and expense of a big wedding in those post-war years of austerity. Ron had trained as a draughtsman before the war but on discharge from the RAF, with jobs in high demand he began working as an engine fitter with British Railways, and later with Hoover, in their regional sales team.

Ron and Barbara initially lived in Bridgford and Carlton in rented accommodation but both wanted to move further away from the city and found a rented house in Lowdham, where they moved with Steve (born 1952) and Kate (born 1954).

The next step was to buy the house next to Lowdham station when it came up for sale: ‘The Orchards’ was a former coaching inn, with outhouses and stables, sitting on a large plot of land. They kept chickens and occasionally geese, selling the eggs to friends and neighbours, and they grew fruit and vegetables to supplement the family diet. Barbara enjoyed this lifestyle and was finally able to nurture her love of gardening – the passion that stayed with her for the rest of her days.

Cally and Jim were born in 1962, the year of serious flooding in Lowdham. Later that year was also the start of the three month freeze of winter 1962-3. The family house survived both these events intact; in the case of the flooding this was due to the existence of the old cellar – water poured into the cellar through the hatch window, rather than building up around and into the ground floor of the house itself.

It was shortly after Jim and Cally started school at Lowdham C of E primary, that Ron and Barbara decided to take the huge step of selling the house and going into the licensing trade. Prompted by the prospect of Ron’s impending redundancy from Hoover, they sold the house to a developer and moved from Nottinghamshire in 1967 to the Nag’s Head at Hulland Ward, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire.

This was a time of enormous strain on both Ron and Barbara – a major lifestyle change for the entire family. But at that time also Jim became seriously ill and spent eight weeks in Nottingham Children’s Hospital. While Ron oversaw the moving operations and took over the running of the pub, it was Barbara who travelled every day on buses from Hulland to Nottingham to visit Jim. No other visitors were allowed, and therefore he did not see the rest of the family for the whole of that period.

The five years spent at the Nag’s Head were often fun, sociable times, but also extremely hard work for both Ron and Barbara. Trade built up successfully, driving the takings into a higher category which, in the context of a ‘tied house’ (the most prevalent business model in the license trade at that time) meant that the brewery notified that the rent on the establishment was to increase by a substantial amount.

Ron and Barbara therefore decided to apply for a management position with the same brewery, and this led to a move to The Brackens Hotel in Alvaston, Derby in 1972. Knowing they planned to remain at The Brackens until retirement, it was Barbara who pushed for them to buy a house for them to retire to.

Thus it was that they spent their last years together at the house in Farm Drive, Alvaston, until Ron’s death in 2006. Barbara’s passion for gardening was at last given free reign, and from the moment they took possession of the house she began to develop the large garden at the back into the beautiful, tranquil and naturalistic space that all visitors will most remember.

At first the house and garden were only Barbara’s passion project, but after retirement Ron too became more involved, and helped with the more practical, engineering-based tasks to be done. He was extremely proud of the results, and quick to give due acknowledgement to Barbara’s hard work and imagination in
creating such a lovely space.

At the Brackens, Barbara took up Family History research and successfully traced her side of the family back to the late 16th Century. She did most of this on paper, and the records include many rolls of wallpaper, on the back of which she laid out various branches of the family.

However, along the way she took the decision to become computer literate and took a course with the U3A which led to other activities and a new group of friends. She continued emailing family, sharing photos and messages on the computer until her dementia made it impossible – but she was well into her 90s before she became too unwell to continue using the computer.

After a couple of broken hips and Steve’s tragically early death in 2017, Barbara’s physical and mental capacity began slowly to deteriorate, and she moved into Kiwi House in July 2020. Her naturally robust constitution helped her to survive Covid while she was there, and she retained a very healthy appetite until relatively recently.

On and around her 96th birthday she was visited by her sister Jen with great-niece Florence, by Kate with son-in-law Brentnol, and by Jim with grandson George. Drifting in and out of sleep, her engagement and lucidity was very variable on these visits, but what all her visitors – indeed all who knew her – will remember most of all, is the smile, taking over her whole face in those moments of near-recognition and almost-communication.

If she had only known that she would share the date of her passing with that of the Queen, that smile would have been even broader!