Remembering Beatrys Lockie (1927 – 2023)

Beatrys Lockie was born in The Netherlands and began to tell stories at an early age. She moved to Scotland, where she met her future husband, Edinburgh-born James Lockie, whom she married in 1951. Together, they had five children: Hamish, Finlay, Calum, Neil and Gisela.

In the early 1970s the Lockies bought the Whim at Lamancha, Peeblesshire, a three-sided, 18th-century “square” stable block originally built for the Duke of Argyll, comprising several cottages, bothies and a large leaky-roofed shed.

Here, the Lockies, assisted by their grown-up children, rebuilt the derelict houses. Encouraged by Beatrys’s skills at spinning and weaving on a small Inkle loom, James took early retirement from his university post and equipped the huge shed to make full-size eight-shaft Whim looms.

For several years Beatrys taught at the Rudolf Steiner School in Edinburgh and encouraging the development of young minds was a feature of Lockie households. Indeed, at the respective ages of 78 and 81, the Lockies visited the Maldives at the invitation of the United Nations to help set up a kindergarten.

In 2014 the Lockies moved to Coldingham with the eminently perfect address of Paradise Lane and typically Lockyish “upside down” construction where one enters from the street on the first floor and descends to the ground floor living room and kitchen. James Lockie died aged 91 on the 18th August 2015.

In recent years Beatrys had moved to Taunton, to be near her daughter, Gisela. Beatrys passed away on the 6th July 2023 in Taunton, Somerset.

Beatrys was the author of Bedtime Storytelling: Become Your Child’s Storyteller and Lottie, St Michael and the Lonely Dragon, which published in August 2023. Beatrys was delighted to receive her advance copy earlier this year.