Expat Buxton pensioner’s ashes finally laid to rest in her childhood High Peak home

Daisy Connor’s daughter and grandchildren - all Teessiders - saw the 93-year-old’s ashes interred at Buxton Cemetery last week - 75 years after she left the area.

The ‘popular and funny’ High Peak expat’s daughter Christine Davies told how her mum Daisy (nee Baker) left to marry a Middlesbrough RAF man - but her heart ‘was always in beautiful Buxton’.

During a moving committal service in a ‘quiet and tranquil’ area of the cemetery the family - including Christine’s three children and husband Bill - read several personal poems.

While a funeral director from Buxton’s RW Percival spoke about Daisy’s connections with the area and read the Lord’s Prayer.

Christine, 70, described the ceremony at Daisy’s graveside as ‘just so bright - not upsetting at all’.

She said: “The sun was shining and it was just unbelievably calm - we marvelled at the place because it was just so pretty.

“It was like a proper funeral but more personal - it was just so bright and although we had a little weep it wasn’t as bad as it could have been during a standard funeral.”

Daisy died of coronavirus on April 18 at Middlesbrough’s James Cook Hospital after battling poor health in a nursing home for the last decade.

Mother-of-three Christine said after thinking ‘long and hard’ about a fitting tribute the family decided to return the grandmother-of-eight to her hometown.

She said: “Often when mum was ill at the care home or in hospital she would say ‘I wish I could go back to Buxton’ and the children always said she should return - it’s what she would have wanted.”

Describing her mum in April, Christine said: “She was really clever - always doing a Sudoku puzzle and she was very intuitive.

“My mum was really fun-loving - she loved ballroom dancing with my father and was always out and about.”

During the service flowers were laid from Daisy’s entire family and roses were buried with her ashes.

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