Margaret Helen Boulton (née Leary), 1923-2014
Margaret Leary was born in Stockton-on-Tees on 14th October 1923; she was the only child
of Phyllis Sarll from Mansfield (Nottinghamshire) and Arthur Haydn Leary from Bourne
(Lincolnshire), who had moved to Stockton when Arthur was appointed the organist and
choirmaster of Holy Trinity Church. He fulfilled this role for over fifty years, during which
time he was also a music teacher and the composer of anthems and other church music.
Margaret’s early upbringing was dominated by the church, by the shared love of music
(including a friendship with the family of the singer Janet Baker) and her mother’s penchant
for amateur dramatics. Lively and secure though this setting was for a young girl, it was
thought by her parents that she would benefit from more company of her own age and, when
a distant aunt left Margaret a generous legacy, they decided to send her to boarding school.
Luckily they chose St Hilda’s School at Sneaton Castle – not far down the coast from
Stockton. The years that Margaret spent there undoubtedly had a hugely significant and
positive influence on the rest of her life. She loved the spirituality, the structured daily pattern
of worship and learning, the friends she made, and the OHP sisters who inspired her. She was
a pupil at St Hilda’s from 1936 to 1941 and thus also experienced the Wemmergill years,
evacuated to the Bowes-Lyon hunting lodge in Teesdale, studying science in the makeshift
labs above the coach house and taking her Higher School Certificate exams in the most trying
of conditions. In spite of this, she adored her time at this peripatetic St Hilda’s and spoke of it
regularly for the rest of her life. Whenever we were in the northeast of England, she would
persuade the rest of the family that a visit to Sneaton or Sleights could be fitted into our
schedule, and we would meet up with sisters whom she remembered as her teachers or those
who had been pupils with her and had gone on to join the order. I particularly recall her old
friend Eppie (presumably Elspeth, though I’m not sure if that was the name under which she
professed) who was the most dynamic and wonderful person, completely changing my
stereotyped view of a nun and overcoming my childish fear of those tall women in wimples.
Once, when visiting Sneaton as a small girl, I remember being delighted when Eppie emerged
from the convent to greet us, wearing a capacious, brightly-coloured apron over her habit and
clutching a large bowl of cake mixture which I was generously invited to ‘lick out’. From that
moment I was a fan of hers for life.
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My mother passed her exams and left Wemmergill Hall in the middle of the war. Her
education continued in spite of this, and she went from St Hilda’s School Whitby to St Hild’s
College Durham where she trained as a teacher, specialising in music and P.E. During her
time in Durham she met my father, James (or Jim) Boulton, a Yorkshireman from Pickering
who was an English Literature student at University College. This encounter took place in the
most romantic of circumstances – at a ball in the great baronial hall of Durham Castle.
However, Jim was about to interrupt his studies to join the RAF and train as a pilot, travelling
eventually to Rhodesia, Malaya and India. Margaret and Jim were sweethearts at a distance
for the rest of the war and during his subsequent service in the RAF, but in the end he
returned safely to Durham and completed his studies. By this time Margaret was living at
home again and teaching in a local school in a very poor area of Stockton; when Jim and
Margaret married at Holy Trinity Church in August 1949, the pupils turned up unexpectedly
and formed an archway through which the bride and groom emerged from the churchyard.
Margaret was obviously a popular teacher: firm but fair, sympathetic to those who struggled
with their schoolwork but always convinced that they could do better. She also had a winning
smile and vivacious manner which no doubt softened the strictness and adherence to principle
that was essential to her nature. When Jim won a scholarship to undertake postgraduate
studies in Oxford, starting immediately after they were married, Margaret taught in a rural
Oxfordshire school and was the main breadwinner for the first two years of their marriage.
Only when Jim’s lectureship at Nottingham University was made permanent in the early
1950s did Margaret pause her career in order to start a family. My brother Andrew was born
in 1953 and I followed in 1955.
The OHP sisters at Sneaton Castle Priory were never far from the centre of Margaret’s
life. I am told that she took Jim to meet the Prioress – or rather, to be checked over to see if
he was acceptable – before they got engaged. A few years later, Margaret lost her own
mother while expecting me, and it is said that as soon as possible after I was born she took
me to Sneaton to be shown to the Prioress, then Mother Margaret, her own namesake and
undoubtedly her spiritual mother. It seems that the Prioress was a very loving honorary
grandmother, though not an expert with the pram: I was apparently tipped into the road when
being pushed around the local lanes for some fresh air. No ill consequences ensued and the
event provided the material for what became a favourite family story. In fact, my mother
spoke of her years at Sneaton with such warmth and frequency that it is clear that they
constituted an immensely happy and influential period of her life; the community’s clarity
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and strength of vision gave her the morality and spiritual purpose that remained with her until
her very last days. The traditions of Sneaton shaped the practice of her faith and her
commitment to the Anglican church as an adult. She was a loyal parishioner at St John the
Baptist’s church in Beeston, near Nottingham, and later at All Saints’ Church in King’s
Heath, Birmingham. In the 1970s, her husband’s career took them from Nottingham to
Birmingham, where he was university professor of English Studies until his retirement, and
Margaret’s own working focus changed, too. From class teaching, she moved into using her
musical skills as the pianist for music and movement classes, both inside and outside the
school system. In the end she became the top Keep Fit pianist in the Midlands, whose skills at
improvisation and her immaculate sense of rhythm made her the accompanist of choice for
Keep Fit leaders, especially when they were conducting demonstration classes in the presence
of examiners. She also learnt the cello as an adult and played for church music groups as well
as an amateur orchestra with a charitable purpose. She had enormous energy and was active
in many church groups, from the Young Wives and the Women’s World Day of Prayer
through to the Bible Reading Fellowship, the coffee team of the local drop-in centre and the
ecumenical Lenten meditation groups hosted at her house. In addition to being a hands-on
mother, she was the loyal assistant to her husband’s research projects and, in her own right, a
keen dancer, tennis-player, keep-fitter, linguist, traveller and cook. She willingly entertained
the scholars and writers who were visiting her husband’s department, but was also always
ready with motherly or practical advice to the many students who passed through our house
as baby-sitters, lodgers or simply waifs in need of her attention.
In later years Margaret’s energy diminished and she began to develop the dementia
which eventually became so severe that she had to move into a nursing home near where she
and Jim were living, close to my home in Snowdonia, North Wales. She remained devout and
faithful to the last, receiving her communion regularly from the staff of Bangor Cathedral
who visited her in the home. When she had lost the power of speech and could hardly move
any part of her body apart from one arm, she was still determined to make the sign of the
cross at the relevant moments in the liturgy. She was greatly respected and loved by the staff
of the nursing home as well as by her husband Jim, her two children and their spouses, her
five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren; hardly a day went by without visitors. She
died peacefully in the nursing home at the age of 90 in July 2014, on the first anniversary of
the death of her beloved husband Jim. Later this year her ashes will be interred with his in the
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Boulton family grave in Pickering, where, most appropriately, the cemetery is on the Whitby
Road. She travelled that spiritual road throughout her long and well-lived life.
Helen Wilcox
Nant Peris, Snowdonia
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