We very much appreciate the many kind messages received from friends and family following our mum's death on June 1.  
Please join us if you can at the funeral service for Monica at The City of London Crematorium, North Chapel, on Monday June 17 at 1:00 pm.

There is plenty of parking directly outside the chapel, staff at the gates will direct you. Please don't feel obliged to wear black, just bring yourself. 

The chapel will open at 12.50 pm. If you would like to join close family in escorting the coffin from the nearby funeral parlour, please arrive in time to depart at 12.30 from Compassionate Funerals, 89a Aldersbrook Rd E12 5DG.

If you are travelling by public transport, the nearest station is Manor Park (TFL rail), or there are regular buses (the W19) from Leytonstone station (Central Line).

Service
The City of London Crematorium, Aldersbrook Road, Manor Park, E12 5DQ

Reception
You are all welcome to join us after the service to share our recollections of Monica’s life.
The Golden Fleece, 166 Capel Road Manor Park London E12 5DB

Obituary

Monica Wimborne (nee Horwood) was born on June 30, 1928 in London’s Charing Cross Hospital. She was one of twins but her brother Trevor sadly did not survive. She initially lived at 10 Kensington Gardens with her parents, Pearl and Chaim, and older brother Norman. They moved in 1933 to Forest Hill, where she and Norman enjoyed an active, playful childhood, romping in the garden behind the house. During her time at James Alleyn’s Girls School, she won a national calligraphy competition and was an enthusiastic member of the school netball team.  In wartime, the school evacuated her to Sevenoaks for a while, then she joined her mother Pearl who had been evacuated to a vicarage in Reading.

Just after the war, Monica spent a year studying medicine at the Sorbonne but after a year had to come back to England. She was unable to find a place at a British university, being a woman, and worked instead in a pathology lab. At her parents’ home, then at Menelick Road, Cricklewood, she met David Wimborne, a doctor recently de-mobbed from the RAF and living next door with his parents. Their romance seems to have begun when she fell off her bicycle outside the house and he rushed out to proffer first aid. They married in 1951 in St Petersburg Shul in London, with a reception at the Savoy Hotel. Daughter Naomi was born in 1952.  

On account of David’s work as a hospital doctor the couple moved around. While living in Ottershaw, Surrey, Monica gave birth to Jennifer in 1960. Son Jonathan was born in St Abans in 1965. From haematology and paediatric surgery in St Albans, after moving to Manchester in 1967, David became a consultant pathologist at Salford Royal Hospital. Monica continued to look after the children until Jonathan started school and she went to college to gain secondary school teaching qualifications in art and needlework, then home economics and typing.

She retired from teaching around 1990 after which she travelled widely with David, learned to play the clarinet and undertook a range of college classes. They were both active members of the Labour Party and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. After David’s death in 2001, she remained active, attending dance classes, playing bridge with friends and acting as their chauffeuse on trips to National Trust homes and gardens. She also revealed surprising abilities as a nifty table-tennis player!

In her later years Monica moved from Manchester to live with Naomi in London and then spent her last four years at The Spinney residential home in Chingford. Staff described her as “probably their happiest resident.” She was characteristically cheerful after hip surgery at Whipps Cross hospital following a fall at the end of May, but suffered a sudden heart attack and died on June 1. She was just a few weeks short of her 91^st birthday.

Monica is survived by her brother Norman, children Naomi, Jon and Jennifer, and grandchildren Yassin, Joanna and Lizzie.