A champion of people with handicaps
Appreciation – Elizabeth Ashton Edwards
Sometimes small and seemingly insignificant things that happen on the other side of the world create a chain of events that eventually have deep and lasting effect right here in Jersey. One such event affected Elizabeth Edwards.
Born and brought up in Canada almost a century ago, she went to a local school where by sheer chance her teacher was Miss Le Brun, a young Jersey woman whose family had gone to settle in Canada, as so many had done in those far off days.
Such was Miss Le Brun’s enthusiasm for her native Island that, according to Elizabeth, she somehow weaved the stories and history of Jersey into almost all her lessons and discussions.
She certainly impressed the young Elizabeth.
The years rolled by and Elizabeth eventually got married. After the Second World War she and her husband came on a long visit, touring England and Scotland, and when her husband suggested they should be thinking of heading home she told him there was “no way” she was going back without a visit to Jersey, which she had heard so much about as a young girl. And so they did.
They fell in love with the Island and eventually found and bought a cottage and outbuildings and adjoining land known as Maison des Landes, overlooking the sweep of St. Ouen’s Bay and open spaces thereabout.
They lived happily there for some years until sadly her husband died.
Elizabeth had been in correspondence for some time with groups of handicapped girls, known at that time as spastics, and when they wrote expressing their great desire to come to Jersey for a carefree holiday in the fresh air of our countryside, she invited them to her tiny cottage.
Soon it was overflowing into the little outbuilding and very quickly she realised what a need there was for a place for disabled fold to come here on holiday. The idea of Maison des Landes was born.
She eventually got the hotel under way, after surmounting all the obstacles, which were many, and got the Lions Club of Jersey involved, who finally took over the hotel and run it to this day.
Elizabeth was a lady of tremendous foresight and vision, and also of incredible determination. We only see the like of her perhaps once or twice in a lifetime.
She died peacefully in her home in Richmond on 9th June 2010 at 96 years of age. Gone, but never forgotten.
PH