I first visited Cowes for Cowes Week and immediately fell in love with the town, realising the massive potential that it had in all aspects, not just yachting. I finally moved down to Cowes from London in starting a retail clothing business in the High Street, which I still run to this day. This went on to become the Cowes Business Association. I strongly believe that all residents should be able to fully engage with all activities and events in Cowes.
Cowes Heritage is an organisation focused on recording the history of Cowes, capturing for future generations its industrial past. There are many historic points of interest throughout Cowes. Cowes Business Association. Please contact the CBA for further information: www. Further details can be found on their website: www.
Prince Philip summed her up perfectly on one of several occasions when they met at civic functions. He told her she was like a breath of fresh air, as she revealed far more than your average everyday mayor.
Brought up on a Cowes council estate built by Polish prisoners of war, Lora was a quietly-spoken child who rarely smiled, but listened to everything going on around her, a skill that was to come to the fore in her role as Mayor of Cowes.
Adored by her family and by her teachers, she was taught from an early age to respect your elders, not to answer back, and, most definitely, not to swear. He never owed people money and that is why we lived on a council estate. He paid his rent and owed nobody anything. Lora attended Love Lane Primary School and school was a very happy time for her. Although she came from such a large family, she was never treated any differently.
From her happy days at Love Lane, she completed her education at Cowes High, which was a disappointment to Lora who felt lost among the 1, or so children there. She was an aloof and very serious child who was neither an academic success nor an abject failure. She was a middle of the road child among a vast group at that time who were virtually ignored by the education system. She was good at typing and organization, but hated commerce and left school to join Plessey where she met John Wilcox, now her husband.
Lora was 17 and not in the least interested in having a boyfriend, but John met with the approval of her mother, who, says Lora, always knew a good man when she saw one. Everything revolved around her. Mum always said it was no place for women or children. John and Lora married in and bought a house in Ryde, but Lora has always been very passionate about Cowes, the home of her birth. John was diagnosed with cancer, the extent of which meant it was unlikely they would ever be able to have children.
To their surprise and delight, two girls, Amber and Saffron, were born in and Staying at home to bring up her family and looking after her husband was what Lora was programmed to do by her upbringing. She never had any great ambitions to be anything more, but her passion for the Island was brewing.
The quiet thinker, who never really said much, grew in confidence and Lora was appalled when she learned that Northwood House was to be sold. I was She was voted onto the council straight away and spent two years as Deputy Mayor and two years in the post of Mayor, something she had never thought possible.
But being Mayor brought other problems and the first year was very, very difficult. There were hostilities between groups of people on the council, and Lora had to use her listening skills to pour oil on the troubled waters.
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