She welcomed a princess to her ‘council house garden’, starred in a film despite never having taken an acting class, and gave talks on the QE II.

Steven Russell honours Peggy Cole – who died on Friday aged 80 after a brave battle with cancer – and tells how she helped us treasure what we have.

Last spring and early summer hadn’t been kind to Peggy Cole, but the smile was familiar and the delight genuine. She was back at one of her favourite events – the Suffolk Show – and thrilled to be among friends.

The long-time East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star columnist – famous for her country lore – was being pushed around Trinity Park in a wheelchair by one of her grandchildren.

“I love the Suffolk Show but I haven’t been well and I haven’t been able to come for a few years, but it is lovely to be back again,” she said as she was presented with a special award by the Suffolk Agricultural Association.

It was well-deserved: for reminding us how rural Suffolk used to be, the pace at which old ways were disappearing and of the values we ought to cling on to – while also being glad we don’t face the hardships of yesteryear.

Her rural good-sense struck a chord. Readers and audiences responded to the sense of timelessness and seasonal pattern: about a warm Christmas heralding a cold Easter, for instance, and musings about Stir-up Sunday, when people traditionally make their Christmas pudding.

They recognised the authentic Suffolkness – and there was plenty of pleasing turns of phrase, like a jay “shrieking like a witch” as it carried away its prize of acorns.

Snippets and anecdotes told of an era not so long ago – when, for instance, a male farmworker’s spouse was often expected to help the farmer’s wife in the house. “If the women did not get on, it meant the husband had to leave the job; and, as the house went with the job, they had to move out as soon as they could.”

Peggy knew this bygone world. She hailed from Easton, near Wickham Market, and went to school in Kettleburgh. Her father worked on the land and her mum had been in service.

Peggy was in her early teens when mains water came to her village. And when she and husband Ernie married around the time of the Queen’s coronation, when Peggy was 18, they lived out to live in the wilds at Hoo, where they had a “bucket and chuck it” loo down the garden.

I enjoyed a few “life and everything” chats with Peggy Cole, MBE. One was just before Christmas, 2008. She’d written a little autobiographical book, From Akenfield to Pastures New, whose pathos tugged at your heartstrings in places. Seven years earlier, she’d had to leave the village that had been home for 40-odd years. She’d insisted that the only way she wanted to leave Charsfield was in a box, when her time was up, but in 2001 had bowed to common-sense and reality.

The garden was getting a bit too much, she’d had terrible problems with leg ulcers, and it was time to take things easier. Not fair, either, on brother Ronnie, who did a lot of the hard graft and wasn’t getting any younger.

With a heavy heart she upped sticks to a bungalow on a neat little estate near Woodbridge.

Peggy had moved to her council house home in 1960. It was later named Akenfield, after the film in which she’d starred. It became famous for its thriving garden, which raised thousands of pounds for charity over 28 years. She’d bought the house when Ernie died. “That was always his wish. I couldn’t have done it without his little – what do you call it? – gratuity money from the council where he worked, and so I used it as a down-payment.

“I suppose I’m one of Mrs Thatcher’s lucky people. There was just enough money for me to have that and then buy this. I was most fortunate in lots of ways.”

Back in the summer of 2001, though, as she watched a barn owl flying over the fields of Charsfield, she thought “God, I am going to miss all this countryside and the country lanes.”

She cried on and off all week with the thought of leaving. It was already a difficult time; sister Eileen had just died from cancer, aged 56, after being ill for about eight weeks.

Over that August bank holiday weekend a lady made an offer for Akenfield. “I didn’t have much sleep for the next few days as I knew now that I would be leaving the village. I was chairman of the parish council at that time, so at the next meeting I had to give in my notice. I felt rather sad about it…” Peggy wrote.

At the end of that October, though, during her first evening in the new bungalow, she looked around and said to herself “Now old gal, you have got to settle down and make yourself contented.”

And, seven years later, she reflected that she honestly had never been more so. Was that really true? She told me: “I am a contented person; very much so. After the terrible shock of my husband dying, I used to go out and have to smile. People didn’t realise what I was going through then. You have to try and cover that up.”

Her new life (without a big garden to worry about) had given her the time to enjoy her hobbies: reading books on the Suffolk countryside and the county’s history, and visiting churches.

There was also her collection of old postcards. Most were between 80 and 100 years old, showing Suffolk churches and village scenes.

Peggy regretted the way rural Britain was going – the disappearing post offices, shops, pubs and so on.

She laughed about how her family teased her. “They say ‘Mother’s harping back again!’ But I can’t help looking back. I think, in the village, there used to be five or six cottages – even more – on a farm. The women used to take the children to school; they all used to stop outside the shop; Charsfield was a big fruit-picking place and employed all the women. But that’s gone, you see. This is the sad thing. It’s not just in Charsfield; it’s almost all villages now.”

For nearly 20 years she’d worked at St Audry’s hospital, Melton, and admitted her biggest fear was growing feeble, losing her independence and having to be lifted onto a chair.

In 2008, she looked askance at stories about older-age care and how more and more people were having to sell their homes to pay for it. Her ambition, she said, had always been to pass on her house to her children.

“I think ‘Oh my god, I hope they find me dead in bed!’ I said to them that if I did have to go to hospital, don’t let them keep me going with tubes and things. I don’t wish that.”

But she wasn’t dwelling on such scenarios.

“If I went tomorrow, as I’ve said, I’ve had a wonderful life. It’s no good moaning and groaning; you’ve got to get on with life. I’m still able to get around – and got my marbles! I love doing a bit of cooking still. I am just contented – and every day I think is a bonus.”

Peggy and I also talked early last year. The fives-times grandmother was about to turn 80, and had a hospital appointment coming up – something she clearly wasn’t relishing. But she remained stoic – a trait that, you could sense, had probably served her well as a care nurse, for instance, or laying out the dead for neighbours back in the Charsfield days, or coping with a mastectomy after developing breast cancer in 1994.

In January we spoke about Akenfield, the film made by Sir Peter Hall and inspired by Ronald Blythe’s 1969 book about changes to agriculture and country life.

It was 40 years ago that Akenfield had simultaneous screenings on Sunday night national TV and on the cinema screen. It was even promoted on the front of TV Times. It pulled in a television audience of 14 million – astonishing for a story shot on a shoestring budget in Suffolk, usually at weekends, using country folk as “actors” and improvised dialogue.

Peggy, then in her late 30s, played Dulcie Rouse, mother of a young man torn between staying in the countryside where his family had been rooted for generations or breaking free and building a different life further afield.

Peggy knew Ronnie Blythe. He and her husband were churchwardens at Charsfield. At the local flower show, Ronnie had introduced Peggy to theatre director Peter (later Sir Peter) Hall, who had founded the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Now he wanted to make the film – even though he was taking over as director of the National Theatre and would have a lot on his plate.

Peggy, never afraid of self-deprecation, admits she had no idea who he was.

As well as “acting”, Peggy did much behind the scenes, helping Ronnie scout locations and suggesting locals for some of the roles, such as stone-pickers.

She’d turn her hand to anything, including supplying food for scenes and, at one point, sourcing a baby for filming!

There was also a time she needed a rabbit but couldn’t get one from the butcher.

Then she saw a rabbit with myxomatosis beside the road. “This poor old thing had nearly had it. I hit it on the head and put it in the back of the car,” she told me. “I thought ‘I’ve done it a kindness.’

“I had to skin it and get it ready, and thought ‘You couldn’t guess what trouble I had getting this rabbit...’”

It was a busy time. Peggy was also doing part-time work as a care nurse at St Audry’s hospital, near Woodbridge, as well as looking after her husband and sons Allan and David. Fun, though.

“We made so many friends. I think ‘Gosh, we had some good laughs together.’ The sad thing is – I was writing it down – there’s over 14 of us gone, who were in the film.”

One of her lasting memories was the time it took to shoot a scene – something that bemused the rural cast.

“We’d be there at nine and finish at six. We used to say ‘What a duzzy time we’ve wasted. We’ve done about half an hour all day!’

“Somebody called me a film star, but no, I weren’t. I just made the film. I said ‘I wouldn’t want that life for anything. There’s too much time wasted for me! Give me my life as it is.’”

She might not have made a fortune from Akenfield – Peggy thought she got about £250, which put a little conservatory on her house – but it did change her life.

The film only increased the profile of her lovely “council house garden”, which opened in 1971 and raised money for charity. One famous visitor was Princess Margaret, who had loved the film and arrived for a tour.

Peggy gave talks about the garden – to groups such as the WI – and during the filming of Akenfield would share with her audiences snippets about progress. She also told them she was taking lots of slides of life on-set. Folk wanted her to come back later and show them the pictures. Her diary filled rapidly.

There was great sadness in 1980 when Ernie died suddenly. They’d been married since 1953. Peggy went out, often up to three times a week, talking about Akenfield, her garden and her life.

“It helped to take my mind off things a bit. I often wonder how I did it. I trooped to Norwich and Cambridge; all over the place.” (When I talked to her in January, she was still giving talks, though had cut the number dramatically and wasn’t venturing out at night.)

Her gardening stories, and the Akenfield effect, also took her to America on speaking tours – something that was down to an American chemistry professor and his wife who used to spend about half the year in a rented house outside Wickham Market. It was how Peggy got to show her slides, and share her experiences, on the QE II.

Quite something, when you think about it, to be an ambassador for rural Suffolk. The county will miss one of its greatest supporters.

See more on Peggy Cole’s memorial service here