IN MEMORIAM
Pat Lockwood
The regard and affection in which Pat was held by so many NWEMF members could be attested by the significant number of people, from near and far, who attended her funeral in Knutsford Methodist Church on 9 August. Some, indeed, took an active part in this Service of Celebration.
Mavis Fox spoke very movingly of her friendship with Pat over a 40-year period; she introduced an instrumental realisation of Dowland’s aptly-chosen Weep ye no more, sad fountains by the Egerton Consort (led by Peter Syrus), while, as is customary on such occasions, we all learned much more about Pat, her range of interests and activities, than simply her dedicated involvement in early music.
Pat, who died aged 89, was one of NWEMF’s most dedicated and enthusiastic members, a ‘regular’ at NWEMF and other local early music workshops, also active in various informal music-making activities, until the effects of her advancing years curtailed her attendance only comparatively recently.
Val and I first encountered Pat when she attended Peter Syrus’s Renaissance Workshop sessions at Manchester’s College of Adult Education, not long before NWEMF was inaugurated there in November 1977. I (and others too, I guess) was totally misled by an apparently stern, reproving exterior. As we came to know her better in subsequent years, we realised how wrong those first impressions had been: she was very kind, had a most mischievous (occasionally waspish) sense of humour, and was a delightful musical and social companion. Whether as soprano singer or (more reticently) as tenor viol player, her absence from our various musical activities will be very keenly felt.
Roger Wilkes
I first met Pat about 35 years ago when I was asked to teach on a funny little early music summer school at Little Benslow Hills. There were about eight singers tutored by Colin Mawby and I tutored a similar number of instrumentalists – viols and recorders. Pat sang for most of the time but also joined the instrumentalists on recorder from time to time. When in 1985 Clive asked me to tutor at Ambleside, Pat was almost the first person I saw when I arrived – very reassuring for a nervous first timer! Later Pat came to “Try a viol” and took to the tenor viol with enthusiasm. She came to me for lessons, joined in the viols classes at Ambleside and became a long-standing participant at the Alston Hall viol consort weekends, having also taken up the treble viol. My final view of her was her valiant struggle to keep going at the last weekend she was able to attend.
But my chief memory of Pat was her dry, pithy wit and her way of delivering a quiet but stinging brickbat (never aimed at me, I hasten to add) in such a way that it could take a while to gather the full import of what she had said. I shall miss her greatly.
Elizabeth Dodd
Published in October 2013 Newsletter
