My dear Aunt, Daisy Estelle Thompson. She was the eldest in a family of 4 girls and 2 boys and was addressed at a very early age not as Daisy or Estelle, but we knew her as Girlie. My first recollection of her was of a fairly stern and strong lady who appeared infrequently from some far off place.

Her letters always began with “my dearest eldest nephew” and she signed off with: “love from your eldest aunt”. It was only later that I came to realise that she was not only a very caring person, dedicated to teaching and giving, but also possessed a lovely sense of humour.

She was one of the first young ladies ever to enter Cambridge University and here she excelled, passing out in 1927 with a first degree in Mathematics. Indeed it was her love of mathematics that directed her career for the next 40 years.

Estelle departed for Turkey in 1936 to become the Headmistress of the English High School for Girls in Istanbul. She remained at the school for 30 years during which time she became respected throughout the Middle East and in wider education circles for maintaining the highest standards and providing a first class education in English for girls through from kindergarten to senior school.

She was a legendary figure with much to be proud of, yet she seemed unaware of her reputation and achievements and was totally without vanity and dedicated to her school, its students and its staff.

As a headmistress she was formidable, precise and firm, but she was also the kindest and most thoughtful of helpers, particularly to the young female staff fresh from England, encountering a strange culture and environment. She walked them around the city, up the Bosphorous hills, to island viewpoints, her companions keeping up with her seven league stride with some difficulty.

Though not a partying person, she attended parties to introduce her new teachers and she entertained them, their visiting families and friends, regularly, providing at least one wedding reception for marrying teachers – all, no doubt, from her own pocket. At Christmas there was a special lunch for expatriates of the girls’ and boys’ schools with beautifully-wrapped, carefully chosen gifts for everyone.

Yet she herself lived very simply above the school with as little luxury or self-indulgence as can be seen in her cottage here in Slapton. Her bath in term-time was used by juniors and kindergarten to wash their paint brushes!

Estelle’s modesty, appreciation of small gifts and pleasure in receiving visitors was entirely genuine and her natural courtesy and beautiful manners remained throughout her long and happy life. She will be greatly missed by her family and all her friends in Turkey.

I have received a number of citations from some she knew in Turkey:

From Mary Prentice (a teacher). She writes:

She spent many weekends with us in Hampshire. She loved my children and knitted them matinee jackets and jerseys. All of them were so sad to hear the news as they were devoted to her.

In Turkey, I so well remember the spring picnics round the Islands with the staff. We had to walk twice around before we stopped for food. Estelle would stride well ahead of all of us like a Sergeant Major whilst the rest of us slowed behind her.

From Sidney Nowill (as cousin). He writes:

I was a Governor of the school in Istanbul while Estelle was its headmistress. I thoroughly enjoyed doing business with her, but will always remember her for her energy, particularly her ability to walk for miles. I recall that in her 60s she climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.

From Roland Whittall (a cousin). He writes:

I recall that she would accompany my grandfather, “Cousin Edwin”, when he went shooting in Turkey. She would stride out in the rough for 7-8 hours with no complaint at all – something the other ladies would never have dreamed of doing.

From Betty McKernan (a cousin and former pupil). She recalls:

The school was a beautiful old building with the most fantastic marble stairs. The first floor housed the assembly-cum-gym hall, the second the secretary’s office and the third classrooms, Estelle’s office and her sitting room. She would stand on the landing each morning when school opened and say good morning to each one of her students, mentioning their names, as they took off their school caps!

She was a brilliant maths teacher and we all managed to take it in, basically because there was no fooling around in her classes. But she was patient and fair, even when she was disciplining us.

She knitted beautifully and presented my parents with a lovely hand knitted shawl when I was born. I treasure it.

Dorothy Hose – a former student:

I remember Saturday morning detentions were not bad when Estelle was on duty. Although maths was normally the order of the day, occasionally we had great fun cleaning out cupboards with her!

Also, when I would meet her at the home of another teacher, Daisy Jordan, on one of the Princes Islands, I came to realise that the indomitable “Miss Thompson” in school was great fun outside – she would even allow herself to be ducked when swimming and was up for any games on the beach.

From Handan Haktanır, wife of The Turkish Ambassador to London – a former student:

On 27 April about 30 members of the High School will be gathering at the Ambassador’s residence. When the plans were made we were going to drink to her 98th birthday. Under the circumstances, this is what I will be saying: “She was one of the few people I know who had this extraordinary ability of combing affection with discipline so well. She was a role model for many of us in the English High School for Girls and she will always remain in our hearts and be remembered with great admiration”.

For her services to education in Turkey, she was appointed an OBE.

She returned to England in 1966 to live in Kensington with her sister Jean and took up a post in a girls’ school again of course teaching maths. But it wasn’t only the girls she taught Maths to. For a year between 1968 and 1969 I lived with her in Kensington where she laboured hard and with only partial success to teach me Calculus.

By then she had bought a Cottage on the outskirts of Slapton at Little Pittaford and finally moved there permanently with her youngest sister, Margot, in 1970. After Margot’s death in 1983, she moved into the village to Orchard Terrace and brought with her her sister’s dog, Tina. Although she really wasn’t an animal person, she was very fond of this dog and it gave her the excuse, if she ever needed one, to regularly walk along the Ley to Torcross and back.

My aunt was also a painter and for those of you who have been to her cottage you will have seen a number of examples of her art hanging on her walls. She actually learned to paint when she lived in Slapton by going to art courses at a local college. She was immensely proud of her paintings, most of which tended to be still lifes of fruit bowls. She proudly showed them off to me whenever I visited and accepted no criticism of them (even if I had dared). Dear Estelle, I can only add at this time that you were a truly gifted mathematician but sadly the good Lord never allowed you to extend this strength to the more gentle art of painting.

It was at this time that her relationship with Slapton and love of the Church here took shape and grew as the years progressed. Although in my earlier years, before I fully understood her, I would have described her as a deeply religious person, but it was later that I grew to understand that it was her love of teaching and giving that brought her very close to God. We had many conversations about the relative merits of the teachings in the Old and New Testaments – but she was clearly a new testament person with the gentleness and sensitivity of Christ’s teachings very much finding a synergy with her own view of life.

She also ran the Sunday School for many years and always took a personal interest in her young students even long after they had left school and entered employment.

She adored driving. My first recollection of her car ownership was of a red mini which she used to drive in London. This mini was the love of her life upon which she agonized over its smallest failing and praised its minutest good points.

Her love for this red mini was only exceeded by the love of her white mini which succeeded the red one when this was finally consigned with great emotion to the scrapheap. She drove this mini right into her nineties and I think her greatest regret was, when she finally bowed to the inevitable and let it go, that she never got around to replacing it.

Although she enjoyed her privacy she loved the company of others and regularly organised a lunch for the more elderly ladies of the village. But she never drank. However, she did have one vice and that was chocolate. Peculiarly her great preference was for liqueur chocolates, rather at odds with her insistence on personal abstinence.

Her love of chocolate never left her. I remember bringing down a box of chocolates to her only 6 months ago, only to find out that she had consumed the lot in one sitting, been ill that night and made my brother promise that he wouldn’t tell me in case I no longer brought any.

It was also here at Slapton that she developed an interest in the stock market and started to buy and sell shares. She was very successful at this, the income from which allowed her to support many charities, including the support of a number of nuns in a convent in France. She took much delight in conspiratorially telling me of her successes and continued successfully with this activity right through her 97th year.

Even in her last days, spent at Fairfield House in Chillington, she insisted on going for walks, generally without the knowledge and certainly without the approval of her friends or carers, and never, ever with a stick or a helping arm. When asked why not – “Well, that’s for old people, not for me” was her inevitable reply.

Her refusal to accept that she was progressing in years, her absolute determination to keep going come what may, and her immense strength of purpose were the very dominant factors in her later life. But I believe this characterised her true independence and strength of spirit, which refused to accept that age brought physical penalties.

Although I will find it difficult, I certainly shall not mourn her death, but rather celebrate her truly amazing and fulfilling life. Remembering her for her strength, her caring and above all her absolute determination never, ever to give in.