Peggy Grace Boddington

Peggy was born in Zimbabwe (formally Rhodesia) on 9th of August 1933 to Grace and Ernest Bee on a peanut and tobacco farm near Bindura. For her early years she was sent to boarding school in Harare (Salisbury) until the family returned to the UK in 1947 when Peggy was enrolled to St Helen and St Katharine Abingdon. After leaving school Peggy was put to work on the family farm at Signett hill before going to Moulton college in Northamptonshire where she learnt the farming skills she adopted and used throughout her life. It was also at Moulton that she made many lifelong friends. Peggy settled back in Oxfordshire working diligently for her father until his death in 1955. Peggy took on running the family farm as well as renting the neighbouring farm at Upton. Peggy married her first husband a year later, David August, farm manager at Merriscourt. They have two surviving children, Nicholas, and Angela. Sadly, David was not to make old age, passing away suddenly in 1974 at the age of 44. Peggy was again left managing the family farm until 1976 when she married her second husband, Myles Boddington, a local farmer, and avid golfer.

Signett Hill is famed for prized sheep, sent globally to improve bloodlines in Australia and New Zealand in the 19th Century. Peggy and Myles continued with mixed farming practice, A pedigree Holstien herd, started by David was developed until being disbanded in the 1980s. pigs thrived in the old POW buildings producing quality gilts for PIC and prize winning fatstock. Foot and mouth was the enterprise death nell, but sheep continued on the farm past the death of Myles in 2002, with Peggy as shepherdess of 80 ewes until 2008.

Peggy was an accomplished horse woman, tennis player and swimmer. Horses are in the Bee blood; Peggy would ride with her father’s youngest brother, Uncle Stan, farm manager to S.J. Phillips and son, learning all that was not taught at Moulton while Uncle Ted had a stud at Lower Slaughter. Hunting with the Heythrop was a passion during the winter months, supporting the pony club with her daughter, grooming for stepdaughters when eventing, exercising many a racehorse ready for the jump season, and the modest owner of a Cheltenham Gold cup winner, The Dikler.

On the tennis court Peggy was a feisty opponent, and many a competitive match was fought on courts around Oxfordshire, and later more social games around the Cotswolds.
Peggy taught swimming at the local grammar school. It must have been the crocodiles and hippos in the Mazowe River that made her the strong swimmer that she was. What a shock (or not) teaching children in the un-heated pool at Burford must have been. Peggy was still swimming in the pool at the farm last year, past her 90th birthday; built with the proceeds of the gold cup win, and heated.

Riding to hounds had not been kind to Peggy, having endured several crunching falls, and broken her back on one occasion, the time came to follow another country pursuit, picking-up, a pastime she shared with Myles, when he was not on the golf course. Springer spaniels of some description, and a black and tan terrier scoured the woods for fallen birds on shoots days, with Peggy returning to the game cart laden with presumed irretrievable runners to add to the bag.

Anyone passing the farm during the summer will have surely noticed the acres of mown lawn and roadside verge and will have probably waved at Peggy as she charged up and down on her mowing machine. The kitchen garden was her pride, a greenhouse full of tomatoes and cucumbers, fruit cage overflowing with currents of all colours, strawberries gooseberries and loganberries. Flower borders with the brightest displays, dahlias, and red-hot pokers especially. All this with just a few hours of help a week, mostly to help move the chicken arcs. More comfortable in her work clothes than dressing up, though if the occasion required she could scrub up and do a curtsy with the best of them.

Peggy could be chatty, but usually divulged information as if bidding at bridge, on a ‘need to know’ basis, and unless entirely relevant, you didn’t need to know. Bridge kept Peggy’s mind active, and like everything she turned her hand to, she gave it her best, and her best was pretty darn good.

A true Cotswold Champion who will be greatly missed by those who had the pleasure of her company.
Farewell Mum.