Family tribute for Helen Birdwood

A funeral tribute to Helen Birdwood

by her nephew 

I feel a bit of a fraud stood here, if I’m honest.  Although Helen’s family have known her longer, because we’re misguided enough not to live in God’s own county, you folk who do, in many ways know her better.

If every one of us here today were to tell just three things we remember about Helen, for one thing, we’d only scratch the surface; and for another I’m guessing that even Yorkshire tea would be past its best by the time we got through to the hall!   I’m going to give some snippets – though more than three, I’m afraid.

Although Helen lived in Addingham for more than 50 years, she wasn’t a local born and bred – in fact, she wasn’t even born in Britain.  Her father was an officer in the Indian Army, and Helen was born in Quetta, in present-day Pakistan.  When she was 6, her parents brought her and my mother to Britain for the first time, and the two girls remained behind when their parents returned to India.  They lived with their uncle and aunt and their two sons, Helen’s cousins.  Thanks to Mr Hitler, Helen saw her mother only once, and her father not at all, throughout the next 10 years, until after the end of the second World War.

One of Helen’s longer standing memories is of visiting “Uncle Will” at his apartment in Hampton Court – yes, the Hampton Court – in the late 1940s.  Uncle Will was not strictly speaking Helen’s uncle – he was actually her grandfather’s first cousin.  He was much better known as Field Marshall Lord Birdwood of Anzac and Totnes, probably the most distinguished of the Birdwood family’s soldiers.

Last month, we saw people waiting in The Mall in the rain for the King’s coronation.  Helen had been there and done that for the Queen’s coronation in 1953, and she would have got the tee-shirt if tee-shirts had been invented then!  In 1961 Helen emigrated to what was then Northern Rhodesia.  There she learned to fly light aircraft, qualifying, first as a pilot, and then as a flying instructor.  That also qualified her to be my unofficial driving instructor when she visited Britain in 1968.  When I got things wrong, she told me, as you can imagine; and when I wasn’t wrong but there was a better way of doing it, she also told me; but her criticism was never anything other than constructive.  In Africa she regularly undertook the 400-mile journey from Luanshya, where she lived, over the top of the Kariba Dam wall to visit her parents in Salisbury (present day Harare) – a long journey by any standards, but it probably felt longer as her car then was a Mini (i.e. the Austin/Morris original, not the present-day BMW re-incarnation).

When next she was in this country in 1971, she had left what was by then Zambia and was looking for a job and a home here.  The job came up at the hospital in Otley, so the home had to be in this area.  She bought her bungalow in Moor Park Drive in 1971, and has lived there ever since.  For the first couple of years, she still had the Toyota car she’d brought with her from Zambia.  Being to African specification, it didn’t have a heater! so her journeys to and from work in the first couple of winters are probably best left to the imagination!  She was very pleased when at last she could replace it with another red Toyota made to UK specification, which of course did include a heater.

She soon began to welcome family members to her new home, and always had a full itinerary planned and picnics prepared.  We would return to East Anglia after a weekend wondering if we’d stayed with her for one week or two!  Of course Helen  wasn’t only entertaining us – she was also exploring her new home county for her own benefit – and after living in Addingham for more than 50 years I’m sure she must have become at least an honorary Yorkshirewoman, even if she didn’t have the accent to prove it.

Helen was one of those wonderful people who you always felt better for having seen.  Christmas at my parents’ home in Ipswich always seemed complete when she arrived to stay, and meeting her at Harlow Carr, or Bolton Abbey, or her home, was always special.  Partly this was because it didn’t happen often, of course, but the main reason was Helen herself, who was such a lovely lady to be with – hospitable, interested, and humorous.

After she retired in 1990, she was active in the establishment of Bracken Ghyll golf club in Addingham.  She enjoyed concerts in Leeds (and I’m talking classical music here, not the Spice Girls or Ed Sheeran).  On our birthdays her card was always one of the most eagerly opened – would it be one of her beautiful water colour paintings, or an equally attractive example of her cross-stitch work?   And she was able to spend more time in her beloved garden, and also, for a season, on her allotment which she accessed through a gap in the wall of her back garden.

I’ve almost done!  But I cannot close without referring to her strong Christian faith.  She became a Christian while she was in Africa in the 1960s, and was probably one of the longer standing members of St Peter’s Church here, despite not moving to Addingham until she was in her 40s.  She was well-informed, and I’m sure she’d read most if not all of the many Christian books she had.  Her diagnosis with inoperable cancer last autumn didn’t diminish her faith in the slightest, though she did admit to not looking forward to what the remainder of her life on earth might hold.  It has been just one of the many answers to prayer that she was able to remain in her own home right up to the moment when she breathed her last, and that her last days were peaceful, painless as far as anyone could tell, and dignified.

My final words are – thank you, to all of you who have been part of Helen’s life here in Addingham, and especially those who have supported her so kindly these past few months!