Meet Marian,
IN the words of the aptly named Meat Loaf, she “took the words right out of my mouth”. “I bet it’s just like how your mother used to make it”, said butcher Marian Voyce, nodding because she is rightly sure that she has anticipated what I’m about to say next.
“I know. You don’t get ham like that anymore.”
A pale pink, heavy, slice of homeroasted ham has just rolled from her knife onto the waxed paper so I can taste for myself how it’s nothing like the “wafer-thin stuff ” they sell in the supermarkets these days.
At the age of 88 and thought to be the UK’s oldest butcher, Marian has obviously heard this said a lot about her cured meat which is a little taste of heaven for those of us old enough to still count ham, egg and chips as one of our favourite meals.
It’s 20 years this week since her husband Lionel died at the age of 87 but she shows no sign of leaving the Forest of Dean shop where she has worked alone ever since.
Three days a week she’s there at 7am to collect the deliveries, other days it’s a little later and Monday is cleaning day.
She still works full-time six days a week, roasting the ham at her Cinderford home at night, and doesn’t drink because she’s worried about being breathalysed on her way into work for her early morning starts.
The only concessions she has made to the coronavirus pandemic are adhering to the strict hygiene rules which require her to wear a mask and finishing earlier than usual during lockdown afternoons when nobody was shopping in the town centre.
“People need food,” she explains simply with a shrug.
“Some of my customers have been coming here for over 40 years and I don’t want to let anybody down. I think if you are going to get something, you are going to get it. It’s no good sitting at home worrying about it.
“I’d rather be here. I think we’ve been lucky in the Forest because it’s not been that bad here.”
Her father-in-law Frederick started the business FC Voyce in 1932 and because there were no fridges back then, he used to take any unsold meat around the Forest of Dean mines by horse.
In those days he could buy 28lb lamb for £1 3s 4d and kept a slate for those waiting for pay day to arrive.
Marian met husband Lionel at the FC Voyce stall in the now-disappeared market hall in Coleford.
It’s where she and the other girls went to buy the meat for their mothers during her lunch breaks from the office job at the local solicitors she joined from school.
Almost as soon as they started courting Marian began helping out with deliveries and by the time they married on March 21, 1959 she was fitting butchering around her day job at the office where she worked for 12 years.
Lionel taught her all the old-fashioned skills she still uses today and when they moved into the shop in 1968 they were one of around eight butchers in the Forest of Dean market town.
Being a woman has not stopped her going it alone and her suppliers cut up the carcasses smaller for her so she doesn’t have to drag around heavy sides of meat like in the old days.
She divides the meat up into chops, steaks and joints to order and says she can spot a good cut of meat by just