Pauline came from a very old Leominster family, and lived in the town her whole life.

Her parents met in Birmingham where her mother was working in service. During the Second World War her father was too old for active service and worked in London. Her mother worked in the ammunition factory in Rotherwas, Hereford. After the war her father worked in the Joseph Lucas in Birmingham where the wages were much higher than factories in Leominster, returning to the family on weekends, and they visited him when they could. He retired to Leominster.

Pauline loved growing up in Leominster. She was educated at Sunnycroft, a small private school in Burgess Street. Based in a former Mission Hall, facilities in the school were limited and Pauline had fond memories of going to McEwen’s café in School Lane each day for her lunches with other pupils. Pauline was 14 when the school closed and she transferred to the new Secondary Modern School in Green Lane.

Every summer between about 1940 and 1954 the family would go hop picking. Pauline spoke with great affection about this experience in many interviews she gave to local historians. The pickers would meet beneath the large Beech tree behind the Cinema for the lorry to take them each day to a local farm. To a small child these were idyllic days of collecting wood, cooking over an open fire, and playing amongst the hop bines. As she grew older, Pauline would earn extra pocket money by picking.

When she left school Pauline worked for Greenlands Department store in Hereford, while there she studied at a private College and obtained business qualifications. She then worked for a dental practice in Leominster and later for West Midland Egg Producers in Mill Street. She served in the Territorial Army in the 1950s.

In 1987 she was encouraged to stand for the Town Council (see also Alec Haines and Molly Cooke), and remained a councillor for over 25 years.

In the 1960s the congestion in the town was becoming a serious problem, and the May Fair was asked to move out ‘until the by-pass was built’. The by-pass was not built until the 1980s, and after such a break the Fair could not return. In 1988 Pauline organised a successful petition to bring the Fair back, performing the opening ceremony in 1990.

In 1994–95 she became the 445^th Mayor of Leominster. She worked tirelessly to promote the interests of the town, attending hundreds of events and campaigning for issues as diverse as a providing a new swimming pool and a new primary school, and trying to prevent the closure of the Post Office and the Tourist Information Centre. She was a Governor of the Infants School and served on the Management Committee of Leominster Museum.

One of her fellow councillors remarked that she never missed a town council meeting or civic event, and asked why she committed so much of her time to council work. She replied “I love my town, it’s as simple as that!”

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