Obituary: A Grateful Farewell to a Great Lady of Guildford

Published on: 3 May, 2021
Updated on: 5 May, 2021

Auriol Earle

Auriol Earle, died on Friday, April 30, in the Guildford home where she had lived since 1961.

Over those 60 years, Auriol channelled her considerable energy and creativity into Guildford life. In the 1960s, with a growing number of young children in the borough, she noticed how families struggled through the holiday times.

With her friend Pauline Gough she set up a pioneering scheme of holiday clubs, providing sports and leisure activities for young families. Guildford Holiday Fun offered judo, archery, athletics, art and craft classes for a nominal fee to hundreds of schoolchildren by mobilising a small army of enthusiastic volunteers.

Guildford had seen nothing like this, and her clubs attracted national media attention, a typical example of the power of her charisma and organisational skills.

Auriol, born in Devon in 1928, was an accomplished horsewoman, in her youth winning a cabinet-sized collection of silver cups and shields in gymkhanas across the South West of England.

She was among the first of her generation of women to attend university, graduating from Exeter University with an honours degree in English literature. Auriol put her qualification to use in Guildford when she set up a general studies module for the science and engineering students at the then new University of Surrey.

She had been shocked to discover the aspiring engineers and scientists of the future could sometimes barely construct a coherent sentence, knew next to nothing about the humanities and risked graduating with very much less than a rounded education.

Her interest in education was matched by that of her husband-to-be Eric. After an impossibly romantic encounter involving trains, coinciding job interviews and Waterloo station, they married in Devon in 1952.

Eric’s appointment to the Colonial Education Service resulted in a posting to the West African colony of The Gold Coast. In what was soon to become Ghana, Auriol threw herself into the life of the various education communities, producing a memorable production of Macbeth that included its translation into Twi, the principal language of Ghanaians.

She also established a school for the children of the colonial community and somehow found time to bring three children into the world.

Returning to England in 1961, the home in Guildford was set up by dividing a large house in two. One half was taken by lifelong friends, Bill and Nick Smith, with their three children. Eric and Auriol filled the other half by adding a fourth child to their family.

To say the physical and cultural landscape of Guildford would not be as it is now, but for Auriol’s input is no exaggeration. She helped save the Rodboro Buildings, supported the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, the Electric Theatre and many other features of the town centre.

She was an active member of the Liberal party, and represented the people of Worplesdon ward as Liberal Democrat councillor for several years.

Alas, in her last years she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and retreated more into the home she had made with Eric. In April, the family gathered to celebrate the 69th anniversary of their wedding. Weeks later, she turned 93 but in an increasingly frail state.

Auriol is survived by Eric, her four children, Wendy, Jennifer, Roderic and Patrick, and is remembered with love and affection by her grandchildren, Chloe, Samuel, Joe, Rosa, Niall, Hannah and Eva.

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