Laura Ashley (7^th September 1925 to 17^th September 1985)

Who in the Western World can’t have heard of fashion designer Laura Ashley? Her designs have imbued themselves into furniture, wallpaper, accessories, clothes, curtains....well, anything with a shape and surface. Though she achieved staggering success and accumulated£60 million but she was just 60 when she died and here I am by her grave. You’d think she’d be buried in a cemetery in Kensington or Paddington but she’s in Carno, a small quiet village in Mid-Wales. I went to say hello however I passed through the one-horse town and had driven ten miles before I realised it. I did a U turn, went back, pulled up outside the town’s cemetery and had a frothy coffee.

Why is she buried with her husband in this sleepy backwater and not in say Highgate Cemetery (as she had a beautiful home in Pimlico?) Though her mum and dad lived in London they were Welsh and her mum returned home to give birth to Laura in Merthyr Tydfil. Laura lived there until she was seven when she was educated in Croydon in Surrey. She was soon back though; the south east was a dangerous place in World War Two and Laura was evacuated back to Wales.

Leaving school at 16 she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service and met Bernard Ashley who would become the love of her live and husband (he’d be posted to India but they corresponded by letter.) Aged 20 to 27 she worked as a secretary, marrying Bernard when she was 24 and producing her first two children. How did the design business start? It was while Laura was working for the Women's Institute on quilting that she began designing headscarves, napkins, table mats and tea-towels. Bernard made a machine in the attic of their flat and printed them on it. They invested £10 in dyes and linen and the small acorn had dropped from the tree and started to grow. Laura was 28 when she found a gap in the market that lifted the business off the ground. She was looking for Victorian designs for her patchwork and simply couldn’t find any. She designed her own and printed them into headscarves and they sold very well - so well Bernard gave up his job to work on them full time. Soon mail-order and at high street chains wanted their quintessentially English products.

When Laura was 28 she got lucky. In the film Roman Holiday Audrey Hepburn wore a one of her headscarves - the world went a little nuts for her designs after that. There were more designs on tea-towels, place mats, umbrellas and sales grew. Laura was 30 when the Ashley’s moved the company to Kent in 1955 (nearly ruined when the River Darent overflowed.) However with five years they moved backed to their beloved Wales. The M1 Motorway had just been built and driving up it one day Laura thought there must be more space back in Wales. The Ashley moved there and she was 36 when the very first Laura Ashley shop opened at 35 Maengwyn Street, Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire (they lived above it.) It was 1961 and as the UK was become more prosperous and styles broadened the shop did well. Soon they moved to Carno (where Laura and Bernard lie together forever) and over the next couple of decades the quirky cottage industry gained astonishing speed and proportions. Their four children went into the business and millions came out: there was a private plane, yacht, French Château in Picardy, a villa in the Bahamas and a town-house in Brussels. Laura was offered an OBE but refused it as she was upset her husband wasn’t offered anything (he was later knighted.)

Sadly fate’s cold blade cuts indiscriminately. When Laura was 60 she was visiting her daughter’s home in the Coteswolds. She fell down the stairs and was taken to Walsgrove Hospital in Coventry where she lay in a coma. She didn’t recover and died ten days later of a brain haemorrhage. Ironically a few weeks later Laura Ashley Holdings became a public company and she didn’t witness the small nuclear explosion of business her designs would bring. What began as a hobby on her kitchen table was grossing about £100 million at the time of the death. Her husband Bernard lived for another 24 years and died of cancer in 2009.

I found the Ashley’s by the path that extends down the back of the churchyard. They face a bonny hill that must show the full shades of the seasons. I had a wander in the church (that bore a sign telling users to shut the door as birds kept flying in) and did some preaching on the podium. I returned to the graves, did a hearty salute to the Ashley’s and left. They may be gone but their Romantic English designs often with a 19th-century rural feel live on in millions of houses.

Looking…looking…

If there’s a podium I’ll preach for the animals…

Carno village…

Looking up and down and road…