Former Sidcot School pupil Nancy Woodhead, whose father drowned on the Titanic, has celebrated her 100th birthday (3 December).
To celebrate the milestone Sidcot School Headmaster, Iain Kilpatrick, is to offer a £50 book voucher to the Sidcot Action Group Environment for a Greener Environment (SAGE).
He said: “So many of Nancy’s family have attended Sidcot School, we wanted to mark her birthday with a prize that will benefit the school’s environment action group.”
Nancy, who lives at Quaker-run Sewell House in Winscombe had two parties to celebrate her 100th birthday and said: “I was overwhelmed to see so many people including my 95 year old cousin Douglas and one year old great grand-daughter, Kitty Nancy Baxter. It was a wonderful.”
Her daughter, Alison Clayton, of Weston-super-Mare, said: “I was delighted when I visited Sidcot and found two school year photographs, one with my mother as a pupil and the other of me when I was there in the 1960s.”
Nancy’s father was on the Titanic to tie up business interests in Moose Jaw, Canada, where he and his wife Ella had once emigrated, together with his brother and two sisters.
He and Ella returned to England then Frank, 36, bought a second class ticket for the so called unsinkable ocean liner – 90 per cent of men in second class died due to a lack of lifeboats.
After Frank’s death Ella, with daughters Nancy, Joyce and Ruth moved to Edinburgh, and then returned to Winscombe so Nancy and Ruth could attend Sidcot School.
Nancy said: “My mother rarely talked about the Titanic, and its aftermath, when families had to fight for compensation."
“She told Ruth and I that she had had a premonition on the night of the sinking. She dreamt she was drowning and was holding the two girls up to be saved. When she woke she thought she saw Frank at the foot of her bed.”
After leaving Sidcot at 18 Nancy spent time as a helper at a Swiss school, to improve her French, before training as a physiotherapist.
During World War II Nancy worked in London hospitals, and met Stanley Pimley, when he was home on leave from the army.
They married in 1947 and Alison was born in 1949. The family moved to Crewkerne, to take on the Red Lion Hotel and son Roger was born in 1950.
Stan died suddenly in 1956 when the children were just six and seven. Nancy moved back to Winscombe to live with Ella, and returned to work as physiotherapist in Weston.
Alison, a retired art and design lecturer, said: “Looking back I realise how lucky I was to go to Sidcot. I owe my career to a very charismatic art teacher. Sidcot treated everyone equally with a gentle Quaker ethos and very personal care.”
Nancy re-married Irwin Woodhead when she was 63. They were both longstanding members of Sidcot Friends Meeting. Irwin died in 2003.