Anne Foot
Born 10th September 1935 died April 5th 2022.
Anne was a farmer's daughter who left school with no exam qualififcations but went on to become Chair of Bristol Magistrates, Chair of Bristol and North Avon Magistrates, Chair of the Magistrates' National Youth Committee, Non-executive director of Avon Ambulance and Bristol and Wesy Housing Association and chair of the Anglo-Polish Society in Bristol. She was a cookery tutor and writer and wife of the cricket and theatre writer David Foot.
Born in Street, Somerset, she left school at 16 and through a connection spent three months living in France where she discovered a love for buying and cooking with ingredients like garlic and olive oil rarely seen in post war Britain that still had food rationing.
On her return to the UK she lived for a year in a YWCA in London where she completed a secretarial course before finding work in Yeovil working for Somerset County Council. Not long afterwards she met and married David Foot moving with him when he got a job with the Evening World in Bristol. The couple had two children, Mark and Julia in 1957 and 1960 and were married for 66 years.
While bringing up children and supporting her husband, by then a freelance journalist, Anne worked in Market Research - trailing the first frozen concentrated to arrive in the UK - and trained as an adult education cookery teacher. For more than 20 years she ran numerous courses, including introducing people in Bristol to microwave cookers. She also wrote a regular cookery coloumn in Gloucestershire and Avon Life.
Anne became a JP and was promoted to head of juvenille Bench and then later head of the Bristol Bech where she shook up the courts to ensure cases were seen as speedily and efficiently as possible. She was fiercely independent and believed passionately in doing 'the right thing' rather than cow-towning to those in high places. Believing in the power of "ordinary people" being best placed to judge their peers, she strongly advocated magistrates' benches over stipendiary magistrates, standing up to then then Lord Chancellor.
Her straight-talking, no nonesense approach led her to being invited to become non-executive Director of the former Bristol and West Housing Association, responsible for a large development of award-winning accomadation on Bristol Baltic Wharf and also the Avon Ambulance Trust. She regularly appeared on radio also in newspapers and on tv.
Despite having no connection to Poland apart from a brief visit, she was invited to become Chair of Bristol's Ango-Polish Society, a post she held for many years, and which led her to being honoured with Bristol's Lord Mayor's Award and a Presentation by the Polish High Commissioner.
She lived with David in the same house in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol for more than 55 years and entertained people from all walks of life including actors, sportsmen and women, writers and bedraggled hitch-hikers. The house was also filled with grandchildren and great grandchilden.
The couple continued living at home with care when David developed vascular dementia and Anne deveopled Alzheimer's. Anne died 11 months after David.