OBITUARY OF BARBARA WATERMAN

written by her son Martin

Mrs Barbara Bettine Waterman; née Tyndale-Biscoe, died on August 16th aged 87 at the Magna Nursing Home.

She was one of the few old Broadstoneites left who could tell the story of Broadstone from just after the First World War to the present day.

She was born in 1913 just outside of Edinburgh, but moved to Broadstone a year later, when her father (Brigadier General Julian Tyndale-Biscoe), bought Old Orchard; the house that Alfred Russell Wallace had built; up the road that bears his name.

Apart from her nurses training at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and her service with the QARNNS during the war. She had always lived and worked in the Poole / Broadstone area. From 1947 to 1954 she was a Poole district midwife and was always delighted to see "her babies" grown up, with children of their own.

In 1954 she married John Waterman (an even older Poole family) and moved to his family home "Brookdale farm"; which originally gave its name of Broadstone to the then small hamlet of Corfe Hills when the railway came through.

At Brookdale Farm she was a great supporter of the Girl Guides and was in turn District Commissioner and District President.
She helped him run the farm and guesthouse until his death in 1963, when she sold the remaining fields and converted the farmhouse into flats, which ran as a business until its sale in 1997.

Barbara always had an interest in Broadstone and tried to keep a part of it green as a lung for the village as it spread further outwards. In her latter years she took great enjoyment in trying to get people to smile or say good day when they passed her in the street and would come back with her tally for the day.

She is survived by her only son, who now lives in Australia.