Janet Bewley-Cathie-Wardell-Yerburgh

Former debutante Janet “Poppy” Wardell-Yerburgh (née Cathie) started fencing at the age of 16 and the talented left-hander went on to win the British Women´s Foil Championship six times, in 1965, 1967, 1969-72. As a result of those wins, she went to the three Olympics held between 1964-72 but never got close to an individual or team medal. Despite not medalling at the Olympics, however, Wardell-Yerburgh, a member of the London Polytechnic Fencing Club, won four gold medals (individual and team foil) at the 1966 Kingston, Jamaica, British Empire and Commonwealth Games and at Edinburgh four years later when it was known as the British Commonwealth Games for the first time.

Janet Bewley Cathie, as she was known, married Olympic rower Hugh Wardell-Yerburgh in April 1965. They were married in the chapel at Eton College, where he was a master and rowing coach. Sadly, after less than five years of marriage he was killed in a car accident. Poppy later married Sir David Cooksey and became Lady Cooksey; the marriage ended in divorce in 2003.

A trained accountant, Cooksey took a PhD in Fine Arts at St Andrews University. She chose to become a picture restorer and in 1990 started her own restoration business in London. After her divorce, Cooksey established Uplands House, a 5-star luxury bed and breakfast near Banbury Oxfordshire, and ran it with her partner, the Olympic fencer Graham Paul. The pair of them continued to fence, and win, British, World, and European veterans’ events.

Cooksey devoted a lot of her time to charitable work and raised vast amounts of money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, money to build a hospice for terminally ill children, and to help to many cancer patients. Her charitable work was recognised with the award of an OBE in 2003. Cooksey had earlier been made a Freeman of the City of London.