IN MEMORIAM

SUE SYKES    (February 1938 to June 2021)

Sue Sykes (nèe Allen) was a long-time member of the St. Ippolyts church congregation and she also sang in the choir.  A memorial service will be held for her in St. Ippolyts Church at 2.30pm. on Friday 22nd October.  

Sue was born in New Zealand and brought up in the farming community of Morrinsville.  She came to England in 1959, when she married, and to Hertfordshire (initially Langley and then St. Ippolyts) in 1962.  She remained in 

St. Ippolyts until 2018 when she moved to a care home in Cambridge, nearer two of her daughters.

Sue’s father was a farmer and an MP.  He was also Lieutenant-Colonel in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and was killed in action in Libya in 1942.  Sue and her older brothers, John and Michael, were largely brought up by their mother;  her childhood involved horses and seems to have been a mixture of wild and idyllic.  Sue boarded for her secondary education at Nga Tawa (the Wellington Diocesan School for Girls), where she made many lifelong friends.

In 1957, Sue sailed to Europe with her mother and visited her brother Michael at Pembroke College, Cambridge.  She met her future husband, Richard, at the college’s May Ball.  Sue returned to New Zealand and, once qualified as a barrister, Richard came to NZ to propose.  They were married six weeks later.

Sue and Richard had four children and their household was always a busy and welcoming one, full of pets, ponies, friends, relatives and itinerant Kiwis.  Sue was very energetic and had lots of friends and a busy social life.  She played and organised tennis, was involved in the pony club and shared many other activities with her dear friend, Anne Scott (In Memoriam Pax July/August 2021).  The family also spent happy summers in their house in France, visited by many local and Kiwi friends.

Once her children were grown up, Sue travelled more frequently to New Zealand to visit family, friends and her dairy farm.  She and Richard took up golf and also spent time in London, enjoying the Lincoln’s Inn social life.  They both adored their grandchildren, the first born in 1997. 

Richard and their son died in 2007, but Sue carried on bravely maintaining her social life, travelling and making new friends, despite being diagnosed with dementia and eventually needing full-time care.  She remained sociable and cheerful to the end. 

                                                            A Tribute from The Sykes Family