Joyce and Bill's daughter Heather writes:

'Our family was always home to a variety of animals; Sooty the rabbit, guinea pigs, a cat called Mu (named by my father after a letter in the Greek alphabet, the significance of which was slightly lost on me at the age of three!) and an Airedale dog called Tinker, who obligingly show-jumped around the garden with a toy chimp on his back. He must have been relieved when I eventually acquired a real pony and he was no longer expected to role-play. 

My mother shared my passion for animals. A great organiser, my mother combined forces with me to hold pet shows in the garden and go door-to-door raising money for the RNLI and the PDSA. She and I bred black and Abyssinian cavies (guinea pigs) and showed them successfully in local shows, right up until the pressures of ‘A’ levels meant I had no longer had any time for hobbies.

My father was an excellent carpenter and handyman. He always had a project on the go and built perfectly-engineered dog kennels, cages, runs, travelling boxes (for showing the guinea pigs) and even an entire shed, to keep our furry friends safe and warm.

My father, out of his concern for me, could only see danger in my obsession with ponies. I have no idea how my mother persuaded him to let me have riding lessons and to cash in their hard-earned saving certificates to buy me my first pony, a Welsh Mountain called Smokey.

Three years later, I had outgrown Smokey. The plan was to buy a relatively safe, mature Connemara pony mare. My mother and I fell in love with a two-year-old clinically malnourished Irish Draught gelding, Shamrock, recently arrived from Ireland, whose education was at a very rudimentary stage. Although my mother had no experience of horses, she threw herself into sharing the tasks of carting hay and feeds to him in the winter snow and holding him for hours for the farrier, while I was at school. My mother adored Shamrock and took a keen interest in him until the end of his life, 16 years later.  

In her 70’s and 80’s, Mother was still helping us to care for our horses, Shetland sheep and chickens. She loved bottle-feeding lambs that needed extra help, and all of our animals formed close attachments to her. For many years, Mother had a few of her own sheep running with our flock, and came to lots of sheep shows all over the South of England. We used to love catching up with sheep breeding friends at shows, and Mother's interest in the breed never waned.

I remember helping our vet to lamb a ewe who was in difficulty. Although my mother was already quite frail and used two sticks to walk, and had to monitor the ewes while sitting in a garden chair in the sheep shed, it was so reassuring to be able to hand her the first lamb wrapped in a towel and leave it to her to dry it and warm it, while we dealt with the second one. 

When she was about 88, my mother was helping us because we were late home from work. She tripped over the chickens' perch in their run, while shutting them up for the night. She tore her leg badly and I took her to A & E for medical treatment. I remember the nurse who patched her up demanding to know why on earth I had let my 88-year old mother anywhere near a chicken run. I tried to explain that it was impossible to stop her, she was so keen to help us. After that, I did manage to persuade Mother that it really wasn't very sensible to feed the chickens at her age.

Mother retained her interest in animals right up until the end of her life. She had numerous pet cats herself, and in her last years was often to be found with the residential home's cat, who had 29 residents to choose from, tucked up in her room somewhere.'