JACINTH ROGERS OBITUARY – JANUARY 2024
A promoter of Norfolk’s excellent food and drink awards and a former Aylsham Show president, Jacinth Rogers, has died aged 81, on Monday January 15th 2024.
Elected in 2003, she completed a first husband and wife “double” in the 75-year history of the Aylsham Agricultural Show Association. Her late husband, Michael had been president in 1989.
Never one to sit on her laurels, she threw herself into the promotion of Norfolk’s food and drink. As the first chairman – never “chair”- of the association’s food and drinks awards’ committee, she launched the Food Heroes competition in 2007.
It has gone from strength to strength and become a major feature of the Bank Holiday Monday Show highlighting the range and quality of Norfolk food and drink. Speaking in 2016, she said: “These awards are an opportunity for those people who work extremely hard and with a great level of passion to be rewarded by public recognition.”
She helped with the Aylsham Show’s Festival of Food and Drink, which was started by another former president, the late David Manning, in 1996. This had been a great success, attracting as many as 7,000 visitors to Blickling, and ran for several years.
Born in Sussex, where her father was serving after being evacuated from Dunkirk, she lived there for about five or six years. After the war, when her father was posted by the Army to Austria, she rapidly became fluent in German. Returning to England, she became a secretary in Bradford but then moved to London and worked for the National Trust, where she met her husband.
After he had been promoted as regional agent for the National Trust’s properties in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire in August 1978, they initially moved to Aylsham, while she was also involved in publicity for the Trust. He later became the Trust’s chief agent for all its properties, including the Blicking estate, until his retirement in 1986 after 32 years’ service.
Invited to steward at the Aylsham Show, she was later chief steward of the horse rings. She successfully introduced dressage classes and encouraged showjumping classes to be held on the eve of the show.
A countrywoman at heart, horses and hounds, actually beagles, were a key interest. As secretary to the Norfolk Beagles Hound Club for more than 20 years, she had an encyclopaedic knowledge of packs around the country. When the Norfolk beagles were sold in the mid-1990s and went to Italy, she was instrumental in encouraging packs to visit Norfolk.
She became chairman of the Hound Club in 2019 and was a vice-president of the Peterborough Hound Show.
A keen gardener, she enjoyed riding and kept a series of horses over the years. She was clerk to her local parish council at Oulton for many years.
Married for 52 years, she is survived by a stepson and two stepdaughters. She died on Monday, January 15.
The Funeral will be held on Friday 1st March 2024 at 11.30am at Norfolk Bluebell Wood Burial Park, Old Church Road, Hainford NR10 3BG NB: THIS IS BY PRIVATE INVITATION ONLY.
Michael Pollitt
