exciting and challenging times. Back in London and two headships of schools (both near prisons, Holloway and Pentonville, which she always laughed about) she ended her career with the ILEA as Primary Schools Inspector and Advisor. For several summers, Janet took


groups of children from Inner London to Sibford for a camping holiday on the playing field. They were happy times and the children must have benefited from the experience.


Swimming was another of Janet’s passions and during the war it was almost unheard of to have swimming lessons. That incredible little pool at the old school started so many of us off and into a life time of swimming pleasure. When she was on the School Committee, Janet set up an appeal for the proposed new pool as she felt so strongly that the new buildings should include a good facility. In 1977, whilst serving on the School Committee, Janet met the recently widowed Joseph Sewell and they married in Friends House, Euston Road. It was witnessed by a large gathering of family and friends, many with Sibford connections. Both Janet and Joe continued on their Sibford Committees and it was a happy marriage lasting 33 years until Joe’s death in 2011. They lived in Beaconsfield for most of those years and were members of Jordans Meeting. Janet embraced all of Joe’s family and delighted in the grandchildren and later great grandchildren. She served on numerous Friends Committees and Trusts, as well as being a governor at a local special school and undertaking voluntary work for Oxfam, a retirement home and the local Music Society. She was a founder member of


the Quaker tapestry and helped organise to take it to Bayeux for a few weeks one summer. All those strong and secure


early influences from family and school sustained and made Janet the cheerful, competent, capable and compassionate person she was. With her failing health, she spent her last year in a care home in Headington, Oxford, where she was looked after with great affection and respect and had more visitors than anyone else!


Margaret Joan Shields née Bailey 1 April 1922 ~ 30 May 2017 former Sibford teacher married to Jim Shields, Head of Science Joan Bailey was born in Sunbury- on-Thames, where her parents ran a chemist’s shop. Her sister, Betty, was born three years later. Joan had many happy memories of their childhood, especially of fishing in the river for tiddlers, family rowing trips upriver and holidays in Edenbridge on the farm run by her grandmother and uncle. During the war, Joan finished her schooling at Twickenham High School, then trained as a teacher of domestic science at Battersea Polytechnic. She married James Shields in 1947 and when Jim got a job teaching at Leominster High School they bought their first house in Kingsland, where Christine was born. In 1956, Jim was appointed to teach science at Sibford School, and the family packed themselves, their ginger cat and many of their possessions into their Morris Minor and installed themselves in Beech Cottage. Joan loved Sibford, and involved herself in the local Bright Hour meetings, the fetes and the events at both Sibford School and Sibford Gower School – as well as caring


for her daughters and looking after her two nephews for long periods. Money was tight, but Joan was an excellent manager, and would often stay up late into the night to run up clothes for the children on her Singer treadle sewing machine. She would save out of the housekeeping so that the family could take a holiday each year. When Chris was 10, Joan


returned to teaching, first as a domestic science teacher at Sibford School and then as a teacher at the primary school in Sibford Gower, where she remained until her retirement. Jim and Joan followed the Christian faith throughout their lives. When the family was young they attended the Baptist Chapel in Hook Norton. Later, Joan and Jim became attenders at the Quaker Meeting in Sibford, and Jim was buried there in 2010. Joan spent a long period as a


carer for Jim, who developed dementia in his final years. In the last years of Joan’s own life she suffered several fractures and was registered blind due to macular degeneration, but she received help and support from her much-loved friends, neighbours and carers.


The Sibford Rocket / 31


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