Pam was born on 6 December 1940 in the School House, Bagber, Sturminster Newton after Pam’s expectant mother, Edith, and older siblings were evacuated there during the second world war. after their house in Blacklands Road took a direct hit from a German bomb, luckily the family were in the air raid shelter when the house and almost all of its contents were destroyed. The family only had the clothes on their backs, mostly nightwear, or the towels they were wrapped in as the air raid siren sounded during bath time.
Living at the schoolhouse was hard, it was cold and damp, with no running water and Pam’s mother cooked on open range. Her father, Albert, remained in London and was a private in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. He didn’t meet Pam until she was several years old. The family were later relocated from Dorset to Blackburn to see out the end of the war.
When they returned to London they lived in Beaconsfield Road until the house in Blacklands Road was rebuilt. Pam was one of 9 children, 2 boys and seven girls. she shared a bedroom with six of her sisters and said it was lucky they didn’t have many clothes or possessions as they would have never fitted them in! She had a very happy and loving childhood; she was very close to her brother Derek and her eldest sister Peggy. Pam also looked after her three youngest sisters for her Mum. She attended Catford School for girls where she made lifelong friends in Gina and Pauline.
Pamey was a big fan of motorbikes, regularly rode pillion, went to motorcycle meetings at Brands Hatch and attended the TT races on the Isle of Man. Her other passion was jazz music, and it was the love of jazz that led to her meeting Alan, her soul mate and husband of 60 years. She regularly attended a jazz/skiffle/rock club in Chislehurst Caves in Kent, as did Alan and on 12 August 1959 they met for the very first time in the caves. They were both smitten, she thought he was handsome even though he was wearing a black felt hat sporting a long pheasant feather. They started courting two weeks later. By the end of the September Alan asked Pamey to marry him, well he said, “how about it?” she replied “How about what?”, “getting married” to which her reply was “oh yes”. They didn’t officially get engaged until Alan’s 21st Birthday, having saved more than 10 weeks Army wages to buy a ring.
Tragically, Pam was in a serious accident in September 1960. She was riding pillion on the back of ‘African’ Harry’s motorbike when it was in collision with a car. Pam suffered a serious injury to her leg and damage to her spine. She was however, fortunate to have been close to Stanmore Hospital, and it was there that Mr Dawson, an experienced and senior orthopaedic surgeon, operated and saved Pam’s leg. She remained in hospital for months. This was the start of years of ongoing treatment and operations. Alan was stationed in Germany and when he got to hear, sadly he wasn’t granted compassionate leave and he considered ‘popping home’ (AWOL) but decided against it. Pamey was totally besotted with Alan but her parents were rather strict, they wouldn’t allow Pam and Alan to be in the house alone. It was on one of these occasions that they went to the cinema to see the film Spartacus and it was there that Pam first heard the name Verrinia, Spartacus’s wife in the film. This was they name they would give their first child.
Alan was posted to Kenya in 1961, not returning until January 1962. They married at St Johns the Baptist in Lewisham on 3 March 1962. Later that year Alan joined the London Fire Brigade. Following their marriage they lived with Alan’s mother for a year, whilst they saved for their first house. During this time their first child, Verrinia was born. A month later, in April 1963 they bought and moved to their first house, a bungalow in Istead Rise. Here Pam had two further children, her daughters Delia and Belinda. Although Pam had to undergo numerous treatments and operations, she never let her injuries or pain interfere with her life. Pam was such a great cook, who could rustle up delicious food for numerous hungry mouths, who also made her home fun and so welcoming it was a magnet for the girls’ friends as well as neighbours’ children.
After the move to Maidstone, Northumberland Road became the fun or mad house, there were regular water fights involving Alan, the Hopkins girls and neighbouring children, which sometimes got out of hand, ending up one time with Pam, who was ironing in the kitchen, getting soaked by two full buckets of water and left holding a hissing iron. This house, with its purple front door, purple garage door and purple shutters (made by Alan) on every window was nick-named the ‘ Purple House’ by the girls’ school friends, a name it kept for years. The home was filled with a small menagerie of rabbits, chickens, fish, amphibians, insects and the occasional rehabilitating wild baby bird.
Pam’s favourite time was the school holidays. She took the children on adventures by train and bus to visit museums, galleries, historic buildings and castles, parks, beaches, rivers and zoos both in Kent and in London. She would work in the strawberry fields, sometimes with the girls in tow and save vouchers from the cereal boxes for train fares so that up to four children would travel free with one adult, so they would usually be joined by some other waif and stray. And when the grandchildren, Charlotte, Lewis, Oliver, Alice, Tim and Harry, arrived she would take them on the train or bundle them into her 7 seater car and take them on similar adventures and days out.
Pam, Alan and the girls spent a lot of time at Pam’s parent’s beach hut in Whitstable, a tradition that continued with the grandchildren after Alan bought and rebuilt a beach hut for Pam near to where her parent’s one had been. Pam taught them all how to catch small fish and crabs and how to release them unharmed again afterwards.
Pam loved being Snowy Owl for Shepway Brownies, with Ida (brown owl) and Irene (tawny owl). One of her favourite things was organising the nativity play, she would spend hours at her typewriter bashing out scripts, she would make costumes, Alan would help with scenery. She also ran regular Brownie discos.
Pam and Alan took numerous holidays in the UK and Europe, on their own, or with their lifelong friends Gina and Ernie, Pauline and Brian as well as with family. They travelled several times to visit Derek and his family in Australia, each one a holiday of a lifetime for Pam. They explored Tasmania in a camper-van with Derek and his wife Val, this was Pam’s favourite holiday.
Pam’s beloved sister Peggy suffered a catastrophic stroke in the late 90s. Pam devoted a lot of her time to Peggy and eventually after Peggy was widowed, Pam arranged for her to be moved to a nursing home in Maidstone to be closer to family. Her brother Derek purchased an adapted car for Peggy, so Alan and Pam could take her out and about. Pam was devoted to Peggy and utterly heartbroken when she died.
For over 25 years Pam ran her own business from home, “Pam’s Fancy Dress” which occupied the entire loft room and two of the bedrooms. It was very hard work, but Pam absolutely loved it, she loved the interaction with people and would have completely riotous times with groups of youngsters trying on costume after costume in hysterics and teasing each other. She gave up the business when Alan retired, but kept many of the costumes for years afterwards. Meaning there were always fancy dress costumes available for the family, and also for her and Alan to use at their fancy dress themed dances and party nights, they both loved dressing up, especially Pam.
Pam loved coordinating large family events, her organisational skills were amazing, she did everything from hall hire, booking discos, musicians or magicians, and the catering was incredible, especially the cakes and puddings. Her favourite thing was arranging surprise parties and she managed to ‘surprise’ Alan numerous times.
The family grew when as Alan says “a little cuckoo arrived in the nest”. This was Jilly, who Pam and Alan adopted as their daughter.
Christmases were big family events centred at their home, usually chaos, except in the kitchen where Pam always managed to get everything on time and served to the table piping hot, except the swede, which always seemed to get left in the microwave, usually to be discovered later that day or the next, and became a family joke.
They celebrated their 50th anniversary by taking a cruise, something Pam had always wanted to do. As surprise anniversary presents the girls organised a private tour of Chislehurst Caves with family and friends, where Pam and Alan first met, followed by a meal, as well as a short holiday in Penzance, where they had spent their honeymoon, travelling on a sleeper train, something else Pam had always wanted to do.
Pam loved to swim, it helped her to keep fit despite her injuries and she made numerous friends over the years. Together they attended several dancing clubs learning ballroom and sequence dancing, again making friends along the way. Eventually they took over the running of the Weavering Sequence Dance Club, and Pam would spend hours listening to music, choosing dances and tracks and writing programmes for the dances. She loved doing this and continued to do so even after an injury to her shoulder unfortunately stopped her being able to dance. Sadly lockdown meant that the club paused it’s activities and then Pam just wasn’t well enough to attend again.
In December 2020 Pam and Alan moved from their home of 50 years to a bungalow in Barming. Alan, with the help of daughters and partners spent four months completely gutting and refurbishing the bungalow to make it a dream home for Pam. Although she only lived there for 15 months she loved it, she was so proud of all of Alan’s hard work and would tell everyone what he had done. She talked about her bungalow in the hospice and Verrinia asked if she was happy there, she said “I have always been happy there”, testament to all their hard work, especially Alan’s, making a lovely home for her.