View source for Hynes, Annette - Obituary

Origins<ref>From the Newsletter for Friends of the Heritage Centre July 2019</ref>

It was on 25th November 1993 that Annette Hynes found that she was on the original committee of nine charged with forming a Heritage Centre to preserve the history and culture of the North Tyne Valley and Redesdale. The other members were Dorothy Bell, Ken Gaskin, Aynsley Glass, Diane Helliwell, John Bacon, Jane Coulson, Joe Hedley and Sadie Robson.

The talents of the committee were varied but their commitment to the task united them all. Two months later, the former garage at Shellcroft, next to the Cheviot Hotel, had been secured for the use of the Heritage Centre, thanks to a small grant from Bellingham Parish Council and a peppercorn rent charged by owners Mr. and Mrs. Miller.

Annette was a proudly independent, somewhat private person and encouraging her to submit a pen portrait would not have been easy. She went along, however, with the other members of the committee, describing herself as a retired architect, businesswoman and aircraft pilot, with past experience in the voluntary housing sector in Newcastle. These qualifications were enough to get her elected secretary of the new committee.

Her architectural skills were immediately in demand. Shellcroft had been acquired for the Heritage Centre but it took the vision of Annette as a former architect to turn a deserted garage into a welcoming venue. Annette worked quickly to draw up plans and barely seven months later, on 18th June 1994, Edie Lyons, who had worked for W. P. Collier, opened the new Heritage Centre in front of a group of inquisitive visitors, who had come from as far afield as Essex, Northamptonshire, Burnley and York.

Over the next couple of years, Annette was secretary of the Heritage Centre. She combined this with being editor of the Newsletter, an office to which she returned between 2006 and 2010. Not that she was absent from the Heritage Centre; she was a willing volunteer, always working away quietly in the background, always modestly understating her skills, as she had described in the 1996 Newsletter: "I filled in Dorothy's questionnaire to show that I could draw a plan and type with two fingers ... Little did I know that this would lead to making so many new friends."

For past three years, Annette was membership secretary. She also took the minutes of the committee meetings, a task requiring incredible attention to detail and delicate judgement in deciding what to include and what to omit.

Conversation with Annette was refreshingly clear and concise. She said what she thought. No half-baked ideas or weasel words. More recently, however, Annette was troubled by the march of Old Father Time and the frustration of not being able to do what she demanded of herself. So she has journeyed to her architectural resting place in the sky, whence, no doubt, she will continue to cast a critical yet benevolent eye on the Heritage Centre. We would have enjoyed her presence at the 25th anniversary opening on 7th June but she was with us, undoubtedly, in spirit. R.I.P. Annette.

Many thanks to Stan Owen for this tribute to Annette

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