Great gran’s day at races - Peggy Howard's gets a surprise with 80th birthday bash at Sandown racecourse

Published: 16 June 2011
by PAVAN AMARA

AFTER six children, 15 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, Peggy Howard deserved to be treated on her 80th birthday.

“My grandson gave me this fantastic card all about 1931 on my birthday,” says retired chambermaid Peggy, who has lived on Somers Town’s Coopers Lane Estate for over 30 years.

“It was a bit of a page turner though – it had lists of all the major events that had taken place in my year of birth, and all the celebrities that were born in the same year. Vidal Sassoon was one of them, and now they can add Peggy Howard to the list.” To celebrate her birthday on March 21, Peggy was whisked away in a limo for a surprise day at the races at Sandown.

“I thought someone on the estate was getting married,” says Peggy. “But then the chauffeur signalled to me to step in. I wouldn’t at first, and kept saying it wasn’t for me, but he kept insisting it was for me. When I got in the car all my family were sitting in there with champagne. All of them, even my son and grandson from America. It was heartwarming.”

A special day, at the racetrack, she won £200. Peggy worked as a matron’s assistant at the prestigious Charterhouse school in the 1950s and later found work as a chambermaid at Westminster’s Strand hotel where she recalls cleaning the room of footballer Stanley Matthews.

“I am not into football at all,” said Peggy. “So I had no idea who he was. It was a little room, and very tidy, I didn’t have to do much in the way of cleaning. Compare that to nowadays, where footballers have lavish rooms and expect people to pick up after them. 

“One night he brought the FA Cup trophy back and was holding it up in the hotel reception with his team-mates. There were police there, huge crowds, photographers, and Stanley kept saying to the chambermaids, ‘Come into the photos’, but I was far too shy.”