Extraordinary lives
MURIEL was the most wonderful accompanist, not only to the hundreds of musicians and singers for whom she played piano in churches, concerts, school halls and festivals, but also in life, to me and our son, Andrew.
Born in Kelvedon, Essex, Muriel fell in love with making music at an early age. She applied to the Royal Academy of Music in London and qualified in 1948. Her first teaching job was at Walthamstow Hall, in Sevenoaks, Kent, a boarding school for the children of missionaries.
She later became one of the first music specialists at primary level in Tottenham, North London. She hadn’t realised that after ‘clean, well-behaved girls’ she was letting herself in for ‘tough, dirty, but very lovable boys and girls’.
She moved to the City of London Freemen’s School, Ashtead Park, Surrey, and was made a Freeman of
the City of London in 1957. After teaching around the country, Muriel became a music lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 1965.
We met in 1969. I was responsible for the church attended by her parents and officiated at her father’s funeral. Our paths kept crossing and I was delighted, in 1970, when this smart, cultured career woman agreed to marry me — a widower who was 14 years her junior — and become a mother to my four-year-old son.
Even when she developed Meniere’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear which causes vertigo, Muriel never complained. After being fitted with a hearing aid, she carried on teaching and playing music.
Everywhere my ministry took us, she brought her music to the congregation.
She was delighted that my assigned churches in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, had grand pianos.
Muriel died of complications after contracting the winter flu bug. We interred her ashes on what would have been her 96th birthday. It was also Easter Sunday, so we celebrated the Resurrection and Muriel’s life together.