Bexhill woman’s calendars in aid of Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance

Margaret Hayles has come up with an individual 2020 calender each for Bexhill, Hastings, and 1066 Country, and intends to produce separate ones for other areas, such as Winchelsea.

Each calendar, priced at £10, features photographs she has taken of the main sights for each location.

Margaret said: “This is the eighth year I’ve made the calendar for Bexhill and just two weeks after printing the Hastings one, they all sold out. The Bexhill calendar is available in 17 different locations. I chose the air ambulance to raise money for because a friend of mine was airlifted by them to hospital and they saved his life. They are amazing.”

Last year, Margaret produced a calendar featuring Bexhill’s main sights in aid of Children in Need.

Margaret has devoted a large part of her life to charity in the past, having spent 12 years helping the Dreams Come True charity.

As part of her work she appeared regularly on programmes such as TVAM with Anne Diamond to talk about the fulfilling work she did with children.

Margaret helped 2,000 youngsters realise their dreams, whether meeting Cliff Richard, singing a song with David Essex, tuning a Steinway piano in Hamburg, or visiting Legoland in Denmark.

Her work with Dreams Come True came about by chance. One day in 1982 Margaret was talking to a neighbour who happened to say her daughter had cancer and would love her to meet Bob Champion.

At the height of his career as a jockey, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in July 1979.

Margaret was abandoned as a baby at Stockwell Underground Station in March 1941.

She was christened Jean Stockwell when she was taken into care until she was adopted as a toddler by a wealthy family from Wivelsfield, near Haywards Heath, who changed her name to Margaret.

Margaret became a nurse when she left school, then married at 20 and had four children of her own before she was 25.

Margaret recently found her family - her brother, who lives in Devon, and her sister, with whom she has become very close to.

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