Llorien Jill Shipley, always known as Jill, was born in south London in 1933, the third of four chldren of Albert Leslie Brinkley (Pop, or Les) and Dorothy Augustus Mowbray Stuart Brinkley (Doll).  She had two older brothers, Michael and Ian, and a younger brother Anthony.

She grew up mostly in South London although she was evacuated to Nailsworth in Gloucestershire in the Blitz.  She was educated at Notre Dame Catholic girls’ school in Southwark – she remained a devout Catholic - and although she did well at school, in those days very few women went to university so she began work at Lloyds Bank.  

But she soon came to the attention of a colleague who was also a keen cyclist who invited her to his 21st birthday party.  Endon, or Chip, as he was called by almost everyone except his parents, was smitten and they started to go on bike rides together.  Chip’s friends were not as competitive as Jill’s clubmates and they were at least as interested in the pub lunches at their destinations as in the actual cycling.  Her initial disapproval swiftly turned to lifelong friendship, and this group of friends later lit up our childhood and teenage years with their ability to make anything fun. For his part he realised how serious she was about her Catholic faith and took instruction to convert to Catholicism.

By 1952 they were engaged and in October 1953 they were married.  In those days marriages between staff were frowned upon and she had to give up her job. They lived in a series of flats in London; David was born in 1955 and Ian in 1958. Money was short, living on a clerk’s modest income.

Then in 1959 they moved to Chesham to a house on a small newly built housing estate and made lifelong friendships with the other young couples around.  The two older boys started school and Simon was born in 1964.  Mum always had a love of, and magic with, small children and was happy to care for the children of friends who went out to work.

As the boys got older Mum was persuaded to help out at a residential school for what in those days were called “maladjusted” girls, and soon became a fully fledged geography teacher.  She gave the girls the attention and affection that so many of them, with dysfunctional family backgrounds, had been deprived of, and several of them kept in touch for decades after they had left.

In later years she turned her hand to cake decoration, making extraordinarily accurate sugar icing flower arrangements, and was soon in demand for birthday and wedding cakes.  She made wonderful wedding cakes for her three oldest granddaughters, and was still going strong into her 80s, and all the grandchildren had bespoke birthday cakes year after year.

Mum was a kind and loving Grandma with endless patience and an enthusiasm for things like theme park rides that some of the parents were less enamoured of.  She was always happy to look after children, whether ours or friends’ or neighbours’ at the drop of a hat.

She had an amazing memory for birthdays (which she made a great fuss of and made very special for people) and for children’s names and ages and details of their lives.  She always went out of her way to help people and always had a ready smile.