Reference
AU34/21/1/7
Title
"Honora Grimmer - An Appreciation"
Date free text
1991
Production date
From: 1991 To: 1991
Scope and Content
A typed document written by Simon Houfe of Avenue House, Ampthill upon the death of Honora Grimmer in 1991, for Church and Town:
"HONORA GRIMMER (1900 - 1991) An Appreciation.
Nora Grimmer's long and interesting life really spanned the whole of this century, linking the world of Victorian Ampthill with that of our own time. Born a Victorian on 17th March 1900, she could recall many of the town's chief events from the Edwardian period and yet appeared to be someone in touch with today. A strange instance of this was the fact that she was the first person to teach the present writer the local names of wild flowers and also the first person to give him a pocket calculator!
Ampthill belonged to Nora and Nora to Ampthill in a very real way, she devoted the whole of her life to teaching its children and she could recall most of them by name individually, often recalling childhood pranks and indiscretions with a twinkle, especially when they referred to senior citizens. Her skills were well known, her grounding in the basic three Rs was legendary, and many Ampthillians have a lot to thank her for. Very much a traditionalist and a believer in discipline, she found modern theories hard to take, particularly in view of her long experience and undoubted success in the schoolroom. Her great love of children and of the countryside in which they were growing up combined with a strong sense of what was permissible was once referred to as "The iron hand in the gardening glove".
She was born in Dunstable Street, the daughter of Albert Grimmer, the motor engineer and aviator and his wife Annie. Her father came from East Anglia, but her mother's family, the Swaffields, were well known local residents and their forbears, the Extons, stretch back into early Ampthill history and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nora's family moved to 7 Church Street quite soon and it is there many people remember her, occupying the room level with the archway. After the Moravian School in Bedford and the High School, she returned to Ampthill to teach at the National School in Bedford Street. Shortly afterwards, she spent her only spell of work out of the town, when she became a relief teacher in East Bedfordshire, staying during the week in a cottage near Biggleswade. She remembered thinking what a lot of sky there was in East Bedfordshire!
Her local interests were so wide that it is difficult to record them all, she was a founder member of the Ampthill Brownies and their Brown Owl for almost fifty years and a founder member of the Ampthill branch of the St John's Ambulance Brigade becoming a member of the Order as Serving Sister. Her involvement with St Andrew's was lifelong, as child, confirmation candidate, Sunday School teacher for fifty years, longest serving member of the Parochial Church Council and leader of District Visitors. But many of these offices will be dealt with elsewhere and it is her personality that concerns us here.
Nora was infinitely patient, a habit picked up from a long involvement with infants and always ready to lend an ear to problem or a cause. She was a considerable correspondent with those she did not regularly meet, keeping in touch with godchildren and relatives all over the world, telling them of Amphtill happenings in her clear unmistakeable writing. Her leisure time (there was not much of it with all her activities) was devoted to her beloved greenhouse, reading and the completing of cross-word puzzles. She was extremely successful at the latter and won many national newspaper prizes, ferreting out the information from a formidable collection of reference books - one of the favourites being Brewer's Phrase & Fable. Equally interested in local history, she was a founder member of the Ampthill Preservation Society and a long time subscriber to the Bedfordshire Magazine and the Records Society. Anything local at once engaged her interest and attention. In 1948 she moved with her parents to 3 Station Road, remaining there for thirty-two years, finally moving to Church Avenue eleven years ago.
Although she had never been particularly robust, Nora was a great survivor, recovering splendidly from serious operations in both middle-age and old age. Her eyesight was always poor, but she never missed anything and always claimed to be able to see out of the back of ther head when writing on the blackboard, a talent peculiarly useful to the schoolteacher! Until very recently, her memory was equally sharp and she could conjure up anecdotes of Lady Baden-Powell, Sir Anthony Wingfield and Miss Collie, the headmistress of the High School with the greatest of ease.
A slight sadness for her must have been that she outlived so many of her friends, but this was mitigated by the sight of her former pupils prospering and becoming grandparents and great-grandparents. A maxim of her life might have been thoughtfulness. A teacher once told the teenage Nora "Always consider the other person's point of view." It was an idea she strictly adhered to and many people are grateful for that listening spirit and for her friendship. S.H.
Level of description
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