Dulcie Walsingham — June 4, 1937-February 16, 2022

DULCIE WALSINGHAM, who would be well-known to many in the Henley area as a dance and movement teacher, has died, aged 84.

She was born in Streatham on June 4, 1937 to John and Gwynneth Sauer and was subsequently known as Sawyer when the surname was changed by deed poll in 1945.

She went to the Abbey School in Reading where she showed sporting promise, particularly in swimming and tennis, representing Woodley at junior level.

While there, she also started dancing. She attended the Beryl Jarvis Dancing School and attained her teaching qualifications, enabling her to start her own dance school at Pearson Hall in Sonning when she was 14.

When she was 17, Dulcie started work as a professional dancer with the Mary De Vere Dancers and embarked on a tour of variety theatres with the Benny Hill Show.

It is on this tour that she met Alan Walsingham (aka Grahame) and subsequently undertook further variety dates, including a pantomime season as the Fairy.

In 1954, she and Alan started a weekly commute to the ATV studios in Aston, Birmingham, to appear as a dancer alongside the Jerry Allen Trio in the long-running show Lunchbox with Noele Gordon and guests. Dulcie would also undertake cabaret engagements and was a hostess on the TV show Hit The Limit.

She and Alan were married at Sonning church in 1957 and settled in Peppard, where Dulcie soon started a children’s dance school in the old green scout hut and the village hall. Around the same time, she started work as a keep fit teacher for the Keep Fit Association, leading sessions over many years at Chiltern Edge School in Sonning Common, The Henley College, Reading University and Crowmarsh, among others.

Already a young mother, Dulcie also undertook engagements as a percussionist with the Reading Concert Orchestra, the Alan Grahame Percussion Ensemble and Big Band and the Brian Haddock Band.

She transcribed and arranged Pick Yourself Up for the Alan Grahame Big Band and added percussion at Reading town hall.

In a combination of her unique talents, she also danced the Morton Gould Tap Dance Concerto with the Reading Concert Orchestra, the only time it has been performed in Britain. Over the following years, Dulcie choreographed items for Southern Counties Keep Fit Association at the Royal Albert Hall and national rallies throughout the UK.

Local cultural involvement continued with concerts for Gwyn Arch at Chiltern Edge, including A Day For Dance.

Dulcie was a KFA teacher at The Henley College and around Oxfordshire for more than 45 years.

As the teaching wound down, she and Alan enjoyed travel, especially in their campervan, and she loved seeing her family, now extended with five grandchildren.

More recently Dulcie had been living with Alzheimer’s disease. She died peacefully at the Acacia Lodge care home in Henley on February 16.

She is survived by Alan, her sister Marian and her children, Peter, Suzanne and Lisa.

Peter Walsingham