Trekker has left £8,000 to maintain the hills (From Malvern Gazette)

Trekker has left £8,000 to maintain the hills

3:00pm Monday 18th March 2013 in News By Tarik Al Rasheed

A LOVER of the Malvern Hills has left an £8,000 legacy to ensure they are well looked after.

Joan Howard Smith’s family were originally from Birmingham, but bought a second home in Malvern in 1926, when she was just 11 years old.

Her mother spent much of the summer in Malvern and every Friday, Miss Howard Smith would catch the bus to join her and walk on the hills.

Her love of the Malverns continued throughout her life and she remained a frequent visitor even after the family sold their house, in MalvernWells, in the 1960s.

When Miss Howard Smith passed away in 2010 she left a proportion of her estate to charity and, in honour of the pleasure the hills gave her, her family have now decided to donate £8,000 of this to Malvern Hills Conservators.

Director Stephen Bound said: “We are extremely grateful to Miss Howard Smith’s family for this generous donation.

“It’s lovely to hear about people with such a strong affection for the hills.

“Managing more than 3,000 acres of land and the impact of over a million visitors per year is expensive.

“Gifts such as this ensure we are able to continue to protect and manage the hills for the benefit of the local community, visitors and wildlife.”

Miss Howard Smith kept diaries of her walks, recording the weather and noting seasonal anomalies such as daffodils blooming in February.

These diaries, which also contain anecdotes about wartime Birmingham, have now been donated to Birmingham City Library.