Tower and Town, November 2025 (view the full edition)Family NewsAnn Birley died at the beginning of October, aged 97. If anyone personified 'service' it was Ann. She was always busy at the centre of her large family and in the life of whatever school or community she lived in. The daughter of a schoolmaster at Shrewsbury and married to another, her late husband, Mike, she found herself eventually the headmaster's wife at Eastbourne and then a housemaster's wife at Marlborough College. She involved herself copiously in these schools and in local life, and she knew not only the pupils and the staff, but an incredible number of former pupils and a huge range of people in the community, too. Her memory for names, dates and incidents involving people was colossal and accurate, not as a gossip (she wasn't) but out of a fresh, genuine and good-humoured interest in their lives and achievements. There was no limit to what she was prepared to do, practical, energetic, and tireless. Happy to roll up her sleeves, she was the first to get on with anything that needed doing, in St Peter's Church for example, without any sense that she was doing anyone a favour. The mottos 'Make Do and Mend' and 'Waste Not, Want Not' could have been invented for her. We recall Ann with fondness and gratitude, and send our sympathetic thoughts and memories to David, Sarah, Rick, Jo and their families John Osborne |