Milestones

Evelyn Judith Lane (nee Blencowe) 1919-2004

Judy, (as she was always known in the family), Lane, was the eldest of the three daughters of Charles Blencowe, who some will recall sank the German gunboat on Lake Victoria in World War One.

She was born in East Africa, but in her young days saw little of her parents for she was sent back to England to be educated at St Mary's Brighton, and spent her holidays with her Blencowe grandmother and an Aunt in North Wales. At the start of the last war, she returned to Kenya and enlisted as a nurse with the East African Rifles.

When the war ended, she sailed to England and was trained as a nurse at St Thomas's Hospital, and then back to Africa where she worked as a District Nurse. I can see her now, during the Mau Mau emergency, having somehow reached a remote village on the slopes of Mt Kenya, surrounded by armed askaris and the inevitable black Scottie, or maybe, two or three, giving injections to a long queue of African Children.

After the death of her parents, Judy spent time in what was then Rhodesia and South Africa, before returning to retirement in Dorset. Here she met her Bruce, whom she married in 1985. Sadly they were only able to enjoy 10 years together for Bruce died in 1995. There was always laughter and leg-pulling in their home in Bournemouth, but they were ideally matched and devoted to each other. Judy had many gifts, which she shared with those around her. There was that gift incorporated in her nursing, that of bringing comfort, and often restored health to those who had been ill. She was also a very talented artist. Many of my family have her paintings on their walls. She was also a keen ornithologist with its extraordinary knowledge of East Afriban birds and was seldom without a camera, for again photography was a life long interest of hers.

After suffering a number of mini strokes her health began to fade and her quality of life decreased, but she never lost her sense of humour, spending her final years at Alexandra House in Poole.

Peter Blencowe
Walderton