We are so very sorry to share the news that our dear friend Judith Mylne, from Glencaple, passed away yesterday morning (Friday 3rd April 2020).
Judith was a wonderful woman, full of goodness; a whirlwind of commitment and energy! She got stuck into life in Glencaple, loving the birds and wildlife on her doorstep and the challenge of creating her productive garden.
Judith was a constant and committed member of the Caerlaverock Community Association, walking up the Quay Hill in her hi-vis jacket through the winter weather to attend meetings at the Hutton Hall in Bankend – kindly refusing offers of a lift – before meetings moved to the Nith Hotel, closer to home. Her contributions were valued – ideas, suggestions, solutions, offers of help, a different viewpoint. She was the epitome of great community spirit – supporting events, always the one to give thanks, concerned for the children and the ‘old folk’, thinking of, and doing for others.
Judith’s marmalade and chutneys were legendary – with proceeds of their sale going to the Nith Inshore Rescue . She would spend hours chopping and cooking and stirring and jarring her delicious concoctions and had just let people know about her latest batch this past week, which she left on her doorstep during the lockdown. Donations invited.
In her own words, “I’m just a mad woman who does not like to see fruit and veg going to waste so adds value by making chutney… Also cuts down on food waste, provides good compost material from the peelings etc and maybe gives pleasure to those who eat it!!!”
Judith was devoted to the Fair Trade movement from the start, and worked tirelessly and with great enthusiasm. A member of the Dumfries Fair Trade Group, she was an integral force of Fair Trade Fortnight, though selling her Traidcraft goodies wasn’t limited to these two weeks. Judith also organised Christmas Fair Trade fairs and events at St John’s Church and in Oxfam Dumfries, she took part in the Dumfries Markets, and ran a stall at the annual Barbour Hall Christmas Fayre – roping in (willing) friends to help out! It was an all-consuming labour of love to which she was dedicated.
Judith was, justly, the Scottish Fairtrade Awards ‘Volunteer of the Year’ in 2018, for her ‘extraordinary determination, enthusiasm and commitment to Fair Trade’.
The Quay Hill was a mere slope to Judith who completed the amazing achievement of climbing all of the 282 Munros (Scottish mountains over 3000ft) in August 2016 (plus another few). She used Criffel as a light training ground and was never happier than in the great outdoors. Judith and her late husband Christopher Mylne spent many happy holidays making wildlife films in the remote Scottish Islands. Latterly, Judith relished her time in relative solitude, birdwatching on Shetland – a much-needed annual holiday. However, she always said that she was so lucky to be coming home to such a beautiful part of the world as Caerlaverock. 
Photo credit Ken Mylne
Photo credit Ken Mylne
We are so glad that you made it your home Judith, and that we had the chance to get to know you, to share food and conversation around your table and enjoy your wonderful home cooking and company.
We will miss you more than we can say. Your favourite postie said it well, ‘A huge loss for Glencaple but more so a huge loss to humanity’.
Judith recently shared this verse. Let’s think of her as we sow:
For the garden of your daily living:
Plant three rows of peas
- Peace of mind
- Peace of heart
- Peace of soul
Plant four rows of squash
- Squash gossip
- Squash indifference
- Squash grumbling
- Squash selfishness
Plant four rows of lettuce
- Lettuce be faithful
- Lettuce be kind
- Lettuce be patient
- Lettuce really love one another
No garden is complete without turnips
- Turnip for meetings
- Turnip for service
- Turnip to help one another
To conclude our garden we must have thyme
- Thyme for each other
- Thyme for family
- Thyme for friends
Water freely with patience and cultivate with love.
There is much fruit in your garden because you reap what you sow.
There are many words we could use to describe you Judith, amongst them: intelligent, inspiring, brave, fun, mischievous, kind, caring, honourable, rich, environmental, compassionate, outspoken, sensitive, thoughtful, practical, good, fair, green, giving, down-to-earth, involved, loving and loved.
If you’d like to leave some words of your own, or a story about Judith, please post in the website comments section below, so they are there for family and friends to read in times to come.
A really wonderful and fitting tribute!
What a marvellous tribute to her. She was always active in the community and her views on local affairs were always constructive.
Judith will be very much missed. She was a stalwart of our small community. Always thinking of others and working tirelessly for Fair Trade and other campaigns. She brought me a lovely pot of her marmalade the other day. Her sudden death is so sad.
A really beautiful tribute. Glad I got one last hug at the xmas tree fayre, thanks for being such a lovely friend to my mum Margaret xx
Judith -a marvellous woman and a very dear friend.
she was a very kind, and committed person. She engaged fully with what is going on.
Bravo Judith – we will miss you
and the marmalade is very impressive
Joan
Missed, but Thank God we knew Judith
We still have three jars of her dark marmalade to celebrate her life.
I first met Judith over a coffee a few years before she moved into the village when I discovered she had spent her childhood in Nottingham and, having a friend who had also spent her childhood there I introduced them. Not immediately recognising each other they then discovered they had been in the same class at school!
Always a person to help, soon after she had moved into the village she saw me mixing cement. She obviously decided that at my age I shouldn’t be doing it and for the next few days she helped me with my project.
Judith will be remembered for her help in all sorts of ways to individuals and to charitable institutions. Her marmalade, jams and chutneys were well known and sold in aid of various charities. Her cakes and biscuits were enjoyed by many at various functions and her soup made for “First Base” lunches was well to the fore. I particularly enjoyed her tiramisu which she brought to our Hogmanay lunches.
However she will perhaps, be remembered to a much wider audience for her wonderful displays of “Fair Trade” products often covering 3 six foot long tables. She would spend literally hours transporting, unloading and carrying and then laying out a display of the wide range of products and afterwards putting it all away and returning home with it. Her dedication to this was phenomenal and she rightly deserved the national accolade she received.
It is hard and sad to believe that we will no longer have her visits with news, anecdotes and her infectious giggle which we will never forget.
A really lovely tribute. I just wanted to leave a comment about the type of kind and generous human being Judith was. We didn’t know Judith to the extent of her close friends and family, but Judith has been involved with the school in a caring and supportive way. She attended every school community event she could whether it be in the school itself or across at the Barbour Hall. Each time we planned and delivered a school/community event Judith would offer her support, by either sending us some of her delicious marmalade and chutneys, or attending the event in person, constantly reiterating “the great job the school were doing with the pupils”. But more than that, Judith, on several occasions has sent in cards of support for the school, realising our fight to raise money for our trim trail and playground re-generation, and inside each card would be a generous, selfless cash donation.
It has saddened me to her of her sudden death, as I actually spoke to her face to face on the second last day of school before we shut. I opened the front door, and with a smile she handed me a card and said “I’ll not come too close, I was just out walking and I wanted to come by and let the school know that I am thinking of you all at this difficult time” And this is how she was, and how I will remember her – a close member of a close community who cared for everyone around her.
Every word said about her most fitting to her and her life style. Helping others just naturally flowed to her did not have to think about it or make an effort. She was also a server in church. I have not tasted treacle marmalade any where else. It was just heavenly. She always knew people’s weakness, in my case it was the dark chocolate. Every time I peeped in at her great fair trade stall guaranteed came out with a slab of chocolate. That was a special knack she had. May her soul Rest In Peace and rise in glory
Sending love, light and peace from all our family to Judith’s. May Judith, s journey in the spirit world be as joyful as her life on Earth was, Shirley and Karlis Prahms ☯️
I worked with Barbados and Oxfam she a lovely customer and friends to all of us.
We were so saddened and shocked by the sudden loss of Judith. She was very loving and supportive of us at St John’s.
After a sermon of Andrew’s referring to his love of Marmite ( and other people’s hatred of it!) she gave us a Marmite chocolate Easter Egg……the family has never got over the trauma!
We appreciated your presence in the world so much, Judith. We will miss your cheery smile and your enveloping hugs. May you rest in peace, and rise in glory.
We were so saddened and shocked by the sudden loss of Judith. She was very loving and supportive of us at St John’s.
After a sermon of Andrew’s referring to his love of Marmite ( and other people’s hatred of it!) she gave us a Marmite chocolate Easter Egg……the family has never got over the trauma!
We appreciated Judith ‘s presence in the world so much, Judith. We will miss her cheery smile and her enveloping hugs. May she rest in peace, and rise in glory.
Thank you so much for the wonderful tribute to Judith. It caught so much of her extraordinary generosity of spirit and life. I have known Judith through the fair trade movement, particularly through JTS and the Kilombero rice which sje is holding in the picture taken at Dunscore a month ago. Her stalls were amazing: beautifully set out and labelled, quite the best I have ever seen. But she was so supportive: she wanted to know how the rice framers – who she had met on a number of occasions – were getting on, and she was remarkably generous when -as usual! – we were strugglingget money together to buy the next container. Fair trade is a close-knit network of people and Judith was one of those who injected amazing energy and compassion into the network which is what makes it come alive and achieve so much, How we shall miss her! A lovely, lovely woman.
Judith was both a well-known and well-loved member of the Caerlaverock community and also among the congregation of St John the Evangelist, Dumfries.
After she had found a home at St John’s, Judith played a key role in the life of our church. She worked tirelessly to promote Fairtrade because she believed passionately in human justice, and this was an expression of her Christian faith in action. Judith was also a member of our vestry, the body which is entrusted with the leadership of the church, and she was also one of our altar servers.
Since moving to Glencaple Judith also became a good friend, and we will never forget the occasion on which she came to lunch on Christmas Day. As a result of our own oven breaking down, Judith’s oven had to do the final part of the job, before the remainder of the lunch arrived with Judith herself!
Judith was a warm, intelligent and above all a self-giving person. She was especially good with children and young people, and engaged with them at their own level in terms of the conversation. She also placed herself on their level literally, when she would stoop down so she could talk with them face to face.
Judith’s sudden death means we are all the poorer for her parting, but she also had a strong Christian faith, and we can take heart from the knowledge that, for Judith, death certainly didn’t mark the end. It meant, and it means, a new beginning.
We are so saddened to hear that Judith is gone. The world is a poorer place without her for no one could demonstrate more care for others and good causes than Judith did. She was described by our Mother as ‘an angel’ who came into our lives when we needed her most. Mum was terminally ill and Judith nursed her at The Park Hospital, Nottinghamshire. Her care for our Mother was a wonderful mix of immense knowledge, great skill, vast experience and above all sincere friendship warmly given. It was a wonderful gift to receive at such a terrible point in all of our lives and I do not know how we would have coped without her. Judith’s care and friendship did not stop there but continued for us all after we lost Mum, supporting us through our grief and my own health issues long after. Although none of us had seen her since she moved to Gencaple, we all remained in touch exchanging news. We never ceased to be amazed at Judith’s boundless energy, generosity and constant enterprise for the greater good. We will remember her for her love of the natural world and all the many things she did to preserve it and for her incredibly warm generosity of spirit which meant she always had time for others. She once met me at Nottingham train station and she came across the concourse with her arms outstretched towards me This is how i will always picture her – giving, caring and showing love. What a wonderful person.
My sister Caroline has very accurately summarised how our friendship with Judith became established 14 years ago , in the most desperate of circumstances surrounding the loss of our mother, to whom Judith provided nursing care and friendship at The Park Hospital in Nottingham. Very many people will share our sadness at the news of Judith’s passing. She was exceptional in so many ways and will be missed by all who knew her. A life well lived and lived to the full, selfless, with a generous spirit, joyous, caring and devoted to the welfare of others.
Everyone at Just Trading Scotland was saddened to hear of Judith’s sudden passing. As John has already said above, Judith was a great supporter of JTS and a massive friend to us. She was a tireless fair trade advocate and will be much missed. In 2018 JTS nominated Judith of the Scottish Fair Trade Forum Volunteer of the Year award which she deservedly won for her determination and enthusiasm.
Fair trade has lost a real champion. Our thoughts are with Judith’s friends and family.
I have just read through all your tributes, as we have (remotely) followed Judith’s funeral this morning. It is wonderful to see the love she shared in the community where she chose to make her home in the latter years of her life. You have all captured so well her love of giving to the community and to others, which she did all her life, professionally as well as in the community. As many will know, Judith grew up in a strongly Christian family, and started her career as a social worker which first took her to Scotland. Later in her life, after she married my father, Judith retrained as a nurse, a challenging transition working alongside young trainees many years her junior, and became a dedicated ITU nurse in Glasgow, and then later in Nottingham. Although she returned briefly to Nottingham, she always felt Scotland to be her natural home, and she was so delighted to find her final home in Glencaple. She was always totally committed to what she did, social work, nursing, organic gardening and fair trade, with her commitment to church and community running throughout. Community being both local and worldwide, represented by support for Oxfam in Linlithgow and then of course fair trade with the rice farmers and other producers around the world. We lived a long way apart, in Devon, but visited regularly on our trips to Scotland and will miss her immensely, along with those little packages of Fair Trade goodies which used to drop through our letterbox – fittingly the last of which, filled with Easter eggs, arrived a few days after her passing. Thank-you for all your kind messages to the family – we share our loss with yours.
Ken Mylne
thoughts and prayers with the family , it was a pleasure to have known mrs fairtrade , that was what i called judith , i paid a tribute to her on the local dumfries community radio on friday .She will be hard boots to fill , not sure were i will get my honey and rice now.