My life story

I was born as Linda Mary Evans on the 1st May 1951 in a War Memorial Hospital in Chipping Norton to Edna May Batts and Tudor Evans. My father was Trucker at the Pressed Steel Works of The Hook, Priory Road, Heythrop, Chipping Norton. They met while my father was bus conductor and my mother was domestic help in Cowley, and got married on the 15th June 1949 in the Church of St Mary and St John in Oxford. My parents and my family lived in Heythrop and Woodstock before moving to Shrewsbury.

My grandparents were Charles Batts and Noel Rose Helen Dale who got married on 23rd October 1926 in the Parish Church of Milton under Wychwood. At the time of marriage Charles Batts was Gamekeeper for the Brasseys in Heythrop. Noel Rose Helen Dale was not working at the time.

But she worked as a cleaner for a wealthy family in Great Tew in a grand old house while she was living in Heythrop after her marriage. I remember the time when the lady of the house picked my grandmother and myself up to take us to her house. My grandmother was given the job of cleaning the grand staircase in the great hall, and I was admiring the great hall with silver framed photographs. This was the only glimpse I had of the great house, and afterwards the lady of the house gave me a sixpence, and paid my grandmother, and took us home.

At the time of my parent's marriage, my grandfather Charles Batts was road engineer. Charles Batts, his family, his ancestors who did mostly farming, lived around Wigginton, Witney and mostly in Bampton where they have been christened, married and buried [St Mary's Church].

My grandmother is related to the Bastons, Haywards which has led, if correctly, to Joan de Bohun as she married a John Weaver. It was a very small world then, with very small population in the old days.

Joan de Bohun is related to William the Conqueror, and the old European Royal Family. The Bastons came from Poitou which is in Europe. 

My grandmother and grandfather have lived in Heythrop for more than 50 years in a house called 'The Cottages' which has about three terraced cottages, ending near a hill. They had four daughters Beryl, Joan, Margaret and Edna my mother. They lived in Heythrop all their lives until they got married. They were christened in Heythrop Church, and sang in the choir while they were children. My sister and myself was christened in Heythrop Church. My mother and my aunts went to primary school in Heythrop.

It was in the summer of 1963 that my aunt married in Heythrop church, and I attended the wedding which was memorable. I started my senior boarding school at Rangemore Hall the same year. Theresa May, her mother, and father, Rev. Brasier  went to live in Heythrop in 1964.

My brother used to work for the Jesuit College in Heythrop Park working in the grounds and using the tractor. I remember vividly he gave me and some of the village children, a ride on a trailer behind a tractor around the grounds while the Jesuits were walking about in the sunshine. We all loved looking at Jersey cows with their very long eye lashes in a field, and walking through the woods heading towards Chipping Norton.

I went to Donnington Lodge, Donnington, Newbury, a boarding school from the age of three until I was eight by which time my parents moved to Shrewsbury to be closer to North Wales as my father was born in Wrexham, and had a family there. My father always took me and my siblings for holidays in North Wales including Bala Lake, Llangollen, Llandudno, Rhyl and Wrexham.

I went to Coleham Junior Primary School on a day to day basis, then went to Needwood School, Rangemore Hall at the age of twelve which is again a boarding school until I was seventeen. Rangemore Hall was the former home of the Bass Family and were MPs as well as owning a brewery in Burton on Trent.

When I left school, I worked in a Silhouette factory as a sewing machinist making bras and underwear, then the metal factory doing piece work, looked after babies with hydrocephalus in a children's care home, became a postulant in the convent of St Francis of Assisi and postulant and novice in the convent of the Sisters of Charity.

I worked as chambermaid in Linton Lodge Hotel, Oxford, Savoy Hotel and the White House Hotel, London. I also worked as a washer up briefly at St Hugh's College in Oxford, a cook at Churchill Hospital, medical clerk at the Radcliffe Infirmary, some cleaning jobs including scrubbing the stairs in a block of flats, a piece worker wrapping up sterilised utensils at the Slade Hospital. Lived in as housekeeper and help for retired bank manager with whom I had a very deep loving relationship before he died.

It was in Reading that I got a job at the Bank of Ireland dealing with mortgages, before I got a job as a secretary for all professors and lecturers in the Department of Statistics.

I was in my mid forties when I had two children, a daughter who died nearly aged seven from neuroblastoma and have a son now 22 years old. We moved to Hastings and started childminding before moving up north. Then went into politics full time as political adviser as politics was my only interest as an avid fan in life apart from children.