My friend Rachel Somers, a teacher, who has died aged 65 after treatment for cancer, had many talents, but the one for which she was most celebrated was lovingly maintaining long-term friendships. I first met Rachel in the sandpit of Coram Fields nursery school, Bloomsbury, London, 62 years ago.
She was born and brought up in London, the daughter of Betty Newcombe and Julian Somers, both actors. Rachel attended St Alban’s primary school, Holborn, and Parliament Hill secondary in Camden, and then did her teacher training in Swansea.
Among the London primary schools where Rachel taught were St Luke’s, West Kensington; St George’s, Holborn; Archbishop Tenison’s in Lambeth; and Old Palace Primary, Bromley by Bow. She was also part of the Inner London Education Authority’s peripatetic teaching team at the Centre for Urban Education Studies.
Just as Rachel’s classrooms were always adorned with the most colourful artwork and the most exuberant nature tables, so her career was punctuated with exotic teaching adventures abroad: governessing in a remote Australian outback station only accessible by helicopter; teaching in rural west Vancouver Island, Canada; and several postings working as a literacy tutor in the Sri Lankan village of Hambantota for VSO. Wherever she went, Rachel took photographs of plants and wildlife, and accrued yet more contacts for her compendium of friends, whose birthdays and special occasions she never forgot.
About 14 years ago, Rachel abandoned her beloved London for Faversham, Kent, where she worked initially as a supply teacher, and with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (now known as the Conservation Volunteers), teaching children pond-dipping. She also ran a gardening club for young people with special needs, and spent many hours weeding and planting as a volunteer at the Abbey Physic Community Garden. Rachel was very proud when it won Kent Life’s community garden of the year in 2016. Her own small garden was a vivid Henri Rousseau vision of jungly plants, a sometime award-winner in Faversham in Bloom.
Rachel often visited me in Galway, Ireland, over the years, where she was an invaluable part of a project to claim the once grand gardens of Clonbrock Castle back from the wilderness.
She is survived by her siblings, Cordelia, Simon and Mark.
