Joan Ruth Gilbert was born in Maidstone on the 12th December 1928, the eldest of four children. It was a close and loving family, but a poor one; her father was a bricklayer, and in the Great Depression of the 1930s’, work was irregular. As a girl, she experienced WWII, being evacuated for a short while to Manchester, as, by 1940, Kent was “in the front line”.
Joan was a talented craftswoman, and today would almost certainly have gone to Art School. But in her time, education for working class children generally ended at 14, and most girls were expected to marry rather than develop professional careers. So she became a short-hand typist, a job that she enjoyed and which gave her a measure of independence, but which never fulfilled her potential. She worked in private industry and then for the Civil Service, mainly at the famous East Malling Research Station, a short drive away.
In 1955 Joan married Roy, and livedin Stockett Lane, Coxheath. But Roy was an enthusiastic amateur farmer, and when, in 1958, they spotted a farmhouse for sale on the borders of East and West Farleigh, they quickly moved. They were to live at Castle Acre until 2015, when ill-health forced them to take up residence in a nursing home.
Joan’s was a life devoted to the love and care of others; her younger siblings, her husband and sons, her mother, whom she supported during her long and lonely widowhood, her parents-in-law and many other relatives. She toiled ceaselessly, and organised everything, somehow managing to find time for evening classes and the local WI. But despite all this hard work, she had fun, and made friends easily. She was great sports woman, playing tennis to the highest standards at Tovil Tennis Club. And, when a heart condition made the tennis impossible, she enjoyed first golf, and then bowls, making yet more friends at the Coxheath Bowls Club.
In her last decade, Joan was afflicted by dementia, and the mother who had cared so devotedly for us all, needed our care instead. She was strong, and even at 91 fought off Covid-19, but she couldn’t fight off the dementia. She died in her sleep in October, and was interred with Roy, her husband for 62 years, in West Farleigh Churchyard, at peace at last.