Averil Stedeford was a poet, author, retired psychiatrist and environmentalist.
Her poetry is inspired by her strong Christian faith; by her time working with the dying at Sobell House as one of the first psychiatrists to work in a hospice in the UK; and by her environmentalism, which culminated in her pioneering rennovation of a 1950s semi-detached house in Oxford for which she won an Observer Ethical Award in 2006.
Averil Stedeford (nee Walker) was born in 1932 in Kingford, Essex. She had a difficult childhood, particularly the time when she was evacuated to the US to stay with an aunt she had never met.
After leaving school she studied at University College Hospital where she met Brian Stedeford, a physics graduate, through the Student Christian Movement. They got married in 1955. Averil worked as a junior doctor in Medicine and Surgery in Fulham Hospital and then Paediatrics and Obstetrics in Manchester. She had two girls in 1958 and 1961, Chrissy and Elizabeth. She worked as a part-time GP and commenced training as a psychiatrist. She started a part-time post at Sir Michael Sobell House, the first hospice set up within the NHS. She published Facing Death, Patients, Professionals and their Families in 1984. The second edition was published in 1994 and includes several of her poems.
Averil had a few poems published in her grammar school magazine. She began writing poetry again when in Oxford in the mid-1960s. She attended a three-year Extra Mural Studies course at Oxford University and then started writing more seriously. Some of her poems were about her patients at the hospice. She has built up a significant portfolio of poetry over the years, some of it what she describes as "campaigning poetry". This includes a hymn she wrote for the Millennium and then adapted as God Who Made the World.
Both her daughters suffered serious traumas in their mid/late teens. In both cases, Averil realised how serious the injuries were, and had to insist on further investigation. She wrote the poem Nottingham Five immediately after Elizabeth’s accident.
Soon after she left the hospice, her husband was found to have inoperable cancer. After she nursed him to the end, she then embarked on another project – buying a smaller house in Headington, Oxford and making it as green as possible. She was awarded the Observer Ethical Award for this in 2006.
After she had completed the house refurbishment she enjoyed working as a volunteer at the local Fairtrade shop. In 2012 she suffered a stroke. She did return to live in her own home, but in 2015 she moved to a care home in Hanley Swan to be near Elizabeth, who runs a B&B with her husband, The Dell House. Her older daughter Chrissy was widowed in 2018 and works as a carer in Beaconsfield.
Averil died peacefully at the care home in March 2021. She had chosen the dress she wanted to be buried in, with which she left this poem and photograph.
Averil Stedeford, April 30th 2013
Website compiled by her daughter Elizabeth and grandson Martin.
For enquiries, contact Elizabeth at elizabeth.rolph@flatlandic.net