Tribute paid to ‘remarkable’ former head teacher and well-known Kettering and Oundle resident who has died aged 96

Helen Thompson, a former hairdresser, retrained as a teacher finishing her career as the head of Trinity CE Primary School in Aldwincle.

As well as her career in the salon and classroom, Helen was a leading light in local operettas and volunteered at Oundle Music Festival.

Mum to four children, her son Peter said: “Our mother’s impish sense of humour and optimistic outlook were huge parts of her character and never deserted her, even in extremity.

“Added to those were her warmth, love of life, faith in God, boundless energy and the conviction that everything could be fun. She will be very much missed.”

Her family paid their tribute.

“Helen was a remarkable individual. In 1946, at the age of 15 and while living in the village of Blaby in Leicestershire, she nervously attended her very first dance – in the village hall – where she discovered to her dismay that it was also the annual competition to select the Carnival Queen. She was far too shy to want to participate and tried to hide in the shadows. But the compere spotted her and persuaded her to join the other girls dancing and to her astonishment at the end of the evening the judges named her the winner.

“Two weeks later she officially became the county’s fastest 15-year-old girl when she won the U16 100 yards final in the Leicestershire Schools Championships, which entitled her to represent her county at the first post-war national championships on the playing fields of Eton – but the event turned out to be on the same day as the Blaby carnival.

“The local newspaper carried the story of her dilemma and her eventual decision to renounce the Carnival Queen title and to run instead.

“By chance, the newspaper was forwarded by his mother to Graham Thompson, another young Blaby resident, who was then at the age of 19 serving in the armed forces in Germany. Reading the article aloud he declared to his comrades ‘I’m going to marry this girl!’ Four months later he was demobbed and returned home; on Helen’s 18th birthday they formally announced their engagement; and on Christmas Eve 1950 they wed.

“Soon after their marriage the couple moved to Thomas Road in Kettering where over the next few years Helen produced the first three of her four children (Peter, Ian and Penny).

“Immediately after leaving school she had trained as a hairdresser and she set up her own hairdressing salon in her new home (with a playpen for her clients’ young children, alongside her own) and, blessed with a beautiful singing voice, was also soon performing in local productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas – an involvement which often included making the costumes too, another skill she possessed.

“In 1960 Helen and her family moved to Oundle where she had her fourth child, Roger.

“Always active, Helen had soon joined the Oundle Gilbert and Sullivan Players and established herself as an unfailing member of the team running the Oundle Music Festival. As well as bringing up four children, she restarted her home-based hairdressing salon, held a part-time job in the town centre pharmacy, played the piano at a weekly ballet school, became a regular at pottery and carpentry classes where she made numerous bowls and pots and items of household furniture, knitted scarves, sweaters and gloves for her children, hand-made a wool rug, maintained a very productive kitchen garden and over the years decorated the house several times.

“In 1970 as her children began to reach their teens Helen enrolled in a three-year teacher training course at Corby’s College of Education. She graduated in 1973 and went on to secure primary school teaching posts first in Titchmarsh, and then Glapthorn. After seven years’ teaching she was appointed head teacher at Trinity CE Primary School in Aldwincle, a multi-tasking role into which she threw herself with unbounded energy, teaching sport, swimming, art, drama and craft and organising all kinds of school events as well as managing the school in the widest sense. She even made a maypole and reintroduced maypole dancing for the children as an annual May Day celebration.

“In 1981 Helen and her husband had a house built in Aldwincle and the couple moved to the village from Oundle. Back in 1950 Helen had joined the Fuller Baptist church in Kettering and now, as an Aldwincle resident, she joined the village’s own Baptist church where she became very active in church events and affairs, helping lead the bible study, playing the organ and occasionally even taking services.

“As head of a Church of England school she also worked closely with the institution’s local Rector, organising Christmas Carol and Harvest Festival services in the village church for the children and their parents.

“Helen retired in 1986 and took up golf, playing often at Kettering Golf Club with one of her former Kettering neighbours. She continued her involvement with the Oundle Music Festival and with many other charitable events and institutions both in Oundle and Aldwincle, as well as supporting a home for orphaned boys in India and other overseas initiatives.

“Helen’s husband Graham died in 1991 and thereafter Helen devoted herself with undiminished energy to the numerous charitable causes she supported as well as her many friends and garden, and also began to travel more widely, visiting Thailand, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the Gambia, where she spent a week painting and decorating a newly-built school.

“In 2001 she moved to a bungalow back in Oundle where she joined the Oundle Baptist church and became a regular member of its congregation, as well as continuing her involvement with the Church of England.

“Helen remained almost implausibly youthful in attitude but gradually as the years told she found she could manage less and had to give up her work with the Oundle Music Festival and other events and initiatives. In 2021 she moved into a care home near her daughter Penny in Newmarket and on October 15 this year, following a stroke, passed away.”

Peter added: “Our mother didn’t quite make the age to receive a telegram from the King but she always recalled with great pleasure her invitation to and attendance at a Royal Reception held in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.

“She remembered another London event with equal pleasure in 1969 when searching for a runaway child she ended up waiting in the cramped office of Richard Branson, just turned 19 and at the very beginning his fortune-making career; she always chuckled with a mischievous delight when she told how he’d been rather scared of her and had politely made her a mug of tea.”