Mrs T.R. Potter

8:27am Friday 4th April 2008

Mrs Thelma Rachel Potter (née Meredith), of Broomhill, Birthwaite Rd., Windermere, died on October 12, 2007, aged 74.

Mrs Potter was born in Crewe, Cheshire, in 1933 and spent her early years in Cheshire and North Wales. She attended Crewe Grammar School and then Rhyl Grammar School, where she was made head girl in 1950.

She was awarded a scholarship to Manchester University. She graduated in French and German in 1954 but stayed on for another year to complete a teaching diploma specialising in junior education.

Mrs Potter's first teaching appointment was at the then-oldest school inNewcastle-on-Tyne, Victoria Jubilee School in Byker. She left Newcastle in1956 to marry her fiancé whom she had met at Manchester University, Uter Potter. Uter was then working as a civil engineer in Sunbury-on-Thames, where Thelma also found a junior school teaching post.

Mr Potter's next assignment took him to Darlington, where Mrs Potter accepted a position at Harrowgate Hill Junior School, from which she resigned when the first of her four daughters was born in 1958.

After seven years in Darlington, where all four daughters were born, the family moved for shorter periods to Leeds and then to Tarporley, Cheshire.

Her final move to Windermere came in 1969 where she was an assistant and then a teacher at Windermere Junior School in the 1970s. She later found part-time employment teaching English as a Foreign Language to children at several schools in the area including, particularly, the children of the Vietnamese Boat People acclimatising to the UK at the Ockenden Venture Home in Ambleside. Mrs Potter also gave night school classes in French for beginners for several years.

In 1977 the Potters bought Broomhill in Birthwaite Road, Windermere. The Thomas Mawson-designed house and its extensive grounds had fallen into disrepair, presenting a challenge to Mrs Potters's latent plantsman skills. The acid soil and woodland nature of the garden are ideal for rhododendrons and a collection of upwards of 500 varieties was built up over the remainder of her life. She became an expert on all aspects of the genus and won several prizes at the Scottish Rhododendron Society's shows in Oban.

Mrs Potter's other interests included music (as both an instrumentalist and a vocalist), fell-walking, running (she twice completed the Coniston 14), operating a bed and breakfast establishment at Broomhill, breeding and showing pedigree Burmese cats, bee-keeping, and travel, including a memorable trip to the Galapagos Islands in 2006 to commemorate her and Uter's golden wedding anniversary. All her children have lived and worked overseas so that visiting them involved frequent trips to the USA, Thailand, Singapore, and neighbouring countries.

Mrs Potter coped bravely with cancer for five years, continuing her active lifestyle until the last few months of her life. She died peacefully at home surrounded by members of her family. She leaves her husband, her four daughters, and seven grandchildren.

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