Laura Mabel Powell (née Keeley) died on Monday, 11th May 2009 in her ninety-eighth year. Born on 21st August, 1911 in Berkshire she was educated at Tom Brown’s School at Uffington and at Mrs. Ethelston’s School in Uplyme, Devon where, for a year she was a pupil teacher. She also sang in Uplyme church choir. However, most of her life was spent in Lyme Regis where her husband, Cuthbert William Hansford Powell, was the senior partner of the printing firm of Powell and Morris Ltd in Coombe Street. They had two children: a daughter Hilary who sadly survived for only three weeks and a son Christopher born in 1947.

Cuthbert Powell was for many years churchwarden of Lyme Regis Parish Church where Laura cared for the priests’ vestments and the fair linen. Both Cuthbert and Laura were passionate bellringers, both being members of the famous Lyme Regis band created in the 1930s by the then Vicar of Lyme, Canon Cox, which many now consider to have been one of the finest change ringing bands in Britain. Laura was the last surviving member of that band and consequently, in recent years, many ringers from all over the country came to visit her while she was living in Llandaff with her son, to talk about that famous band.

Laura was a member of the Ladies’ Guild of Change Ringers and an honorary member of the Salisbury Diocesan Guild of Ringers and of the West Dorset Branch. Laura’s brother Harry Keeley and his son Roger were also members of the Lyme band as was Cuthbert’s partner, George Stedman Morris. Ringing dominated all their lives and they gained enormous pleasure from it. Laura’s last peal with her husband was a married couples peal in July 1980, less than a year before Cuthbert’s death. Laura was a widow for twenty-eight years surviving all her siblings and those of her husband.

Laura rang her last peal on 10th September, 1988 at the age of seventy-seven. It was the 50th anniversary of her first peal and the last of her 66 successful peals in 22 different methods, four of which she had rung on handbells during the war years when towers were silent. Laura continued ringing well into her eighties. Eventually, lack of physical strength prevented her from continuing.

She was one of the first to be given life membership of The Ringing World and read it every week with interest right up to her death. Although, latterly, recent events escaped her, she retained to the end her detailed memory of life until she was taken ill in October 2006. Her final two-and-a-half years were spent in a residential home at Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan.

May she rest in peace.

CP