Funeral prayers for safer homes highlight flood defence campaigner's battle for town

A GREAT-grandmother who used her gift for drama to set the stage for her town’s flood defence was laid to rest yesterday with prayers that safer homes and businesses will be her legacy.

More than 150 people from Pickering turned out to say a tearful farewell to Topsy Clinch who died aged 92.

Mrs Clinch was a guiding light of the Pickering Flood Defence Group, who made headlines all over the world by playing the woman in the “living room” set up in Pickering Beck to underline the impact flooding had on homes.

She met Gordon Brown in 2008, when she presented a petition calling for defences for Pickering.

Topsy, of Beck Isle, Pickering, qualified in general nursing at Leeds General Infirmary in 1940 and later worked as a theatre sister at the former Purey Cust Nursing Home in York and the city’s former military hospital in Fulford Road.

A dedicated charity worker, she had a passion for singing, music and amateur dramatics including York Amateur Operatic & Dramatic Society (now York Musical Theatre Company) where she met her late husband Roy. Father Anthony Pritchett told yesterday’s service at St Peter and St Paul Church in Pickering that Topsy, whose full name was Mavis Isobel Clinch, had taken up horse-riding at 60, when she had also obtained a qualification in tap-dancing.

She had been all around the world on holidays with her daughter Ann Leigh.

Fellow floods campaigner Coun Howard Keal said that in spite of her fierce independence, Topsy, whose house was one of 100 swamped two years ago, did not feel safe in her home towards the end of her life.

At one stage water had climbed so high that Topsy, whose bed had been moved downstairs because she was so ill, was just waiting for it to start flowing underneath her.