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Our Church Paton, Lady
Barbara dies, aged 97.
 Lady Barbara Kwiatkowska, a familiar
figure in Pattingham and patron of the parish of Pattingham and
Patshull, died in the Sunrise retirement home at Tettenhall on
October 4th 2013. She was 97.
Until she entered the Sunrise home she was a familiar figure
at St Chad's services. She had also been a stalwart of many of
the village's organisations.
Her funeral, attended by about 250 mourners, was held in St Chad's
Church on Friday, October 18, followed by interment at St Mary'y
Church, Patshull.
She was born Lady Barbara Legge in 1916 and spent her childhood
at Godmersham in Kent with her brother, sisters and their Llewellen
Palmer cousins. Her life-long love of animals, and horses in
particular, dates from this time. She and her younger sister
Josceline were taught to ride by their uncle.
In 1928 the Leqqe family moved to London but she was often able
to stay with friends and relations in the country and to go hunting
- which became her favourite pusuit. In 1936, on the death of
her grandfather, the 6th Earl of Dartmouth, they moved to Patshull,
which was the family home.
At the outbreak of the Second World War she and Josceline joined
the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry and spent the first years of the
war in logistics work, based mainly in Shrophshire. They were
then seconded to the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and were
sent to North Africa and finally to Italy. In Italy she met Adam
Kwiatkowski, an officer in the Polish SOE and they were married
in Bari in 1945.
After the war they came to live at Patshull and raised a family
of four sons. Lady Barbara continued to hunt well into her seventies
and was a founding member of the Albrighton branch ot the Riding
for the Disabled Association. She was actively invoived in the
Mothers Union and the churches of St. Chad's Pattingham and St.
Mary's Patshull. She was engaged in sending clothes to Poland
- with much help from parishioners.
She lived at Patshull until 2012, Adam having died in 2004. Her
last year was spent at the Sunrise retirement home. She is survived
by her four sons, Jan, Marek, Christopher and Michael.
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