Averil Stedeford obituary
My grandma, Averil Stedeford, who has died aged 89, was a psychiatrist, poet and author who was dedicated to helping others. She spent much of her career working in a hospice and after retiring became an award-winning environmentalist.
Averil was born in Chingford, Essex, to Joseph Walker, a Methodist minister, and his wife, Muriel (nee Button). She attended Gosport county grammar school and studied medicine at University College London, graduating with distinction in obstetrics and gynaecology in 1955. There she met her husband, Brian Stedeford, through the student Christian movement. They married in 1955.
She completed her medical training, specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology, at Manchester University in 1958. She then worked as a GP in Ewell and Surbiton, Surrey, and then, after having two children, she retrained as a psychiatrist, gaining an MRCPsych from Oxford University in 1976.
Driven by her faith, she decided she could make best use of her skills by working with the dying, and became one of the first psychiatrists to work in a hospice setting, at Sobell House in Headington, Oxford. She had been seconded there during her training in psychiatry. She found that in a hospice setting she could help people who were suffering in ways that the other staff were less able to do. She stayed there for 12 years.
She distilled her experience into a book, Facing Death, published in 1984. The second edition in 1994 included some of her poetry – almost unheard of in a medical textbook.
Averil Stedeford outside her eco house in Oxford, which won an Observer ethical award in 2006. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer
Her medical career came to an end in 1988 when she became depressed and retired on medical grounds. For the next few years she practised as a private psychotherapist and continued to explore the relation between religion and medicine, and the control of life and death. She had some of this work and some poems published.
After Brian died from cancer in 2003, Averil sold the family home and bought a 1950s semi in Oxford, and set about making it as green as possible. The result was a pioneering retrofit that reduced her home’s carbon footprint by 78%. She was determined not only to minimise the impact of her own home but also to share her experience through open-house tours. For this work, she won an Observer ethical award in 2006.
She wrote poetry throughout her life, often exploring grief, loss and death, such as in her collection The Long Way Down (2017), about the loss of her husband. But she also wrote positive, purposeful poetry which she used to bring awareness to causes such as fair trade and environmentalism.
In 2012 she suffered a stroke and in 2015 moved to a care home. She continued to care for others by helping her fellow residents.
She is survived by her two daughters, Chrissy and Elizabeth, and three grandsons, Simon, Jonathan and me.