Elisabeth Weeks

Elisabeth Weeks (SCR 1972-1991) 

Died 17th June 2024

The following obituary was kindly provided by Elisabeth’s son, Simon Weeks. 

Elisabeth was born on St Leonards Farm near Beaulieu in the New Forest on 3 April 1931, to Ethel and Charles White. She entered the world with a bang! The storm that night caused the roof of the great, medieval grain barn (the largest in England) to collapse. Her early childhood, with her younger sister Anne, was spent living rurally and idyllically, their parents being tenant farmers on the Montague estate. But economic pressures in the Great Depression forced the family to give up the tenancy. Her mother took Elisabeth to Scotland to stay with her extended family, while her father stayed down south, working in a succession of farming jobs. For a period, Elisabeth, her sister and their mother travelled between Stirling and wherever their father could find work. With the family eventually settling in Penn in Buckinghamshire, the girls went to Watford Grammar School. They were both bright and hardworking, but there was always a streak of rivalry between them. This was exemplified when Elisabeth got into Oxford and Anne declared that she would go to Cambridge instead – which she did!

Elisabeth went up to Lady Margaret Hall in 1949, where she studied modern languages, virtually teaching herself Spanish in the summer holidays beforehand. Self-teaching was a recurring theme for this talented linguist, who always liked to learn as much as possible of the language before visiting any new country – including Portuguese, Russian and Hungarian. She loved her student days in Oxford, making lifelong friends. Her time at LMH set the course for the rest of her life, which was to revolve around Oxford and languages.

While at Oxford, Elisabeth met Mike Weeks, who was at Hertford College, and they married in Great Missenden on 17 August 1951. During his last year at Oxford, Mike contracted TB and had to take a year out. This meant that Elisabeth became their main breadwinner, so she followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a teacher. Living in rented accommodation in Iffley Turn, her first job in 1952 was maternity cover in a school in Reading, where her eldest pupil was 18, while she was only 21!

Her three children were born in 1955, 1958 and 1960. In 1962 the family moved to East End, Northleigh, which was to be Elisabeth’s home for over 60 years. This was where she raised her children and welcomed all their friends, and where she entertained her own friends and their families. It was also a much-loved second home to her three grandchildren, born in 1989, 1992 and 1996. Elisabeth’s warm and interested hospitality made everyone feel welcome.

In her teaching career, Elisabeth worked part time at many local schools, including St Helen’s School Abingdon, Headington Girls’, and Oxford High School, before gaining her first full-time post at St Edwards Boys’ School in 1972. Teaching Spanish as their first full-time female teacher was a pioneering step for her. Around this time, she also returned to LMH to study in the evenings for an MPhil, after which she undertook translation work in Spanish and Portuguese, alongside her teaching jobs. Characteristically, she also somehow found time to teach foreign students at St Clare’s Language School during the school summer holidays.

Elisabeth retired from teaching at the age of 60, but this was the start of a whole new chapter of her life. She went to work for Oxford University Press as a lexicographer and editor, working on their English-to-Spanish dictionary, and editing coursework books. There she made close friends and pioneered a form of ‘hybrid working’, as she worked partly from home.

Elisabeth now had the freedom and enough money for travelling further afield to some of the countries she had always wanted to visit. With her close friends Ros, Mary and Judith, or her sister Anne, she had wonderful trips to places such as Cuba, South America, Mexico, Nepal, Syria, China, and New York.

Her deep love of words and languages, and her expertise in this field, were constant throughout her life. Whether learning, teaching or playing word games, she enthused and benefitted 70 years’ worth of people in and around Oxford with her passion and her skill.

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