The Eulogy
Veronica.
What can I say?
Well to start with she would have loved this party!
But Veronica, you are not missing the party today, you are here with us: in every thought, every memory, every good wish, every prayer.

Veronica, your family, and friends are here today to remember you and to celebrate your life. A wonderful life, a very well lived life, a very well-loved life and already very much missed.

Veronica you are surrounded by us all, your partner Leonard, your children, Sarah, Julia, Richard and Lydia, 8 of your 10 grandchildren: those living in South Korea and Denmark are sadly unable to make the journey but beam their love. We are also joined by family and friends from far and near, your presence today means so much.
I speak for us all to say how we have all been so very touched by calls, messages and cards from so many people who knew Veronica.

Veronica possessed an extensive address book. There were so many people she accumulated through her life, kept in touch with and absorbed into her family, for family was everything to Veronica.

Family, music and Hartland.



Your messages recall happy memories from childhood days: growing up with her brothers and sister in Horsham; sunny holidays with cousins together on the south coast; also teaching memories; messages from colleagues who became lifelong friends from her days living and teaching in Foremark and Highgate.

Veronica is so very well remembered by all: a caring and fun-loving parent and grandparent, a wonderful teacher, a very talented musician, violinist and pianist; a trusted confidante, a person anyone could turn to and always rely on.

Born in the 1938 to Janet and David at Foxhole, the home of beloved Aunty Bea and Uncle William, cousins Anne and Michael, Veronica grew up with her brother Tim, sister Heather and little brother Jasper at her parents’ home in Horsham. Veronica always spoke glowingly of her childhood and schooldays.

In fact, Veronica always had a good story, she was a wonderful raconteur with a prodigious memory.
She had stories from her childhood days in the war, recalled hearing the drone of bombers overhead whilst she read by torchlight under the covers in bed.
She recalled how as a small child she had once sat on the knee of composer Ralph Vaughan-Williams: her deep love of music stemmed from those early days.
She had stories of her schooling at Horsham High School for Girls and could still name her teachers and do impersonations of many of them.
She had stories about leaving her violin on the bus and having to retrieve it from lost property at the local bus depot.
She loved cycling with her brother to watch trains go by at Christ’s Hospital, taking picnics and going wild swimming; a love she retained until very recently being an honorary member of the High Tide Club here at The Quay.

She spoke very fondly of her time teacher training at Bletchley Park when that place had become a training college in the 1950s. We had a trip back there a few years ago and she was delighted to find exactly the same unchanged fire escape steps leading up to her old room. A marvellous memory.

Teacher training was where she first met her husband Bill with whom she raised her family; combining that with their busy careers in teaching: first at Leatherhead, then Foremark and onto Shinfield and then Highgate. They also shared a love of music and Veronica as you know was a committed member of many orchestras and music groups as well as teaching violin to so many.
Veronica kept her music to the end and loved to play with orchestras across North Devon and Cornwall and especially enjoyed her place in The Hartland Chamber Orchestra.

Veronica loved her teaching career and always spoke fondly of her years at Foremark, Campsbourne in North London, Bideford College and up to her retirement at Grenville College in Bideford.

Veronica and Bill made the most of the holidays their career gave them. Many of you recall happy times, often shared with family, so there would be a great gang of cousins all together; destinations included Snowdonia, Lyme Regis and of course Hartland.

Hartland is the place that Veronica fell in love with; the family holidayed here from the 1960s, many times staying with the Heards at Moor Farm, and when her marriage came to an end, Hartland is where Veronica chose to start her new life some 40 years ago.


Veronica bravely moved here in 1984 with Richard and Lydia and quickly settled in to this wonderful community. Her home at 30 Fore Street soon became a hub of the village and very often an unofficial extension of the Northern Line from Highgate as many, many old friends came to visit.

It was not so very long before Veronica met Leonard, she called him her very own Gabriel Oak with a fair resemblance to Elvis. And to her delight not only was he eligible but he also farmed the cliffs above her favourite beach at Spekes. In fact she always said he just emerged from the sea one day like magic. It wasn’t just magic, it was a match made in heaven and Leonard and Veronica were lifelong partners ever since.

Leonard we feel for your loss and along with your daughters Heather and Nina, are here for you, always.

Through Veronica’s years in Hartland, her children all married and grandchildren came along.

Over time Veronica retired from teaching and became a very active retiree, writing a book about her family history at Bolderwood in the New Forest, maintaining her music and keeping up with her growing family of grandchildren scattered across Devon, Cornwall, Wiltshire and Berkshire.

Veronica’s cars through those years were always a source of amazement to us all, one of her ever-reliable Nissan Micras really did do the equivalent mileage to the moon and back before finally falling apart. Distance really was no object to Veronica as far as family was concerned. She would literally have gone to the ends of the earth if necessary.



Veronica has left us with a wealth of family stories and sayings which will ever remind us of her. Who can forget her optimism for the weather, when even on the wettest of mornings she would declare ‘It’s a beach afternoon!’
Which brings me to a little story that I hope you’ll see captures the essence of Veronica: it concerns her desire to see her youngest grandson in his school nativity.
Now I understand the school hall where this performance was to take place was very small, so ticket numbers were quite limited which was explained to her, but she was having none of that, she was determined to see her grandson as The Innkeeper in The Nativity, a very important role in the story as we know. So, on hearing that she may not be allowed to squeeze in at the back she turned to the little boy and asked, ‘Well what do you say?’
Now reasonably thinking he had been asked for his line in the play, not his opinion on the matter, he replied beautifully, ‘No Room!’
Those of us that knew Veronica well can imagine her reaction because of course there had to be room.
Which is where I will leave this remarkable, incredible, amazing, wonderful woman: because Veronica, there will always be room, room in our hearts for you.
Thank you.

John Hobbs