Tribute to former Bury St Edmunds landlady Lill Cawston who ran The Tollgate Inn

Tribute has been paid to a ‘caring and loving’ former Bury St Edmunds landlady who ran a ‘real community pub’.

Ethel Cawston, known as Lill, ran The Tollgate Inn, in Fornham Road, with her late husband Walter for a number of years from the 1970s.

She died aged 94 on Friday, January 13 at Chilton Meadows care home, having been diagnosed with dementia.

Her son Stanley, 75, of Bury, who worked part-time at the pub, said his mum was caring, loving and always there for people.

Lill was originally from Rougham, where she attended school, and initially worked as a housekeeper for Fulchers at Hardwick Farm.

As well as the funeral services for which it is still known, Fulchers ran a dairy and butchers and the Cawston family has strong links to the company.

Lill's father-in-law Alfred worked at the farm, while Walter and his brother Geoff were milkmen for Fulchers.

Walter was also a pallbearer and chauffeur for the funeral business and a butcher.

Lill later worked as a cleaner on trains and then at the hospital.

They took over The Tollgate, where Walter had been a barman, in the 1970s.

Stanley said: "It was fantastic and a real family affair. Everybody was friendly and if you were short-staffed two or three customers would help out."

The pub had teams for darts, cribbage and dominoes, while coaches on day trips also used to pull up so passengers could have a drink on their way home.

"It was a real community pub and there was a football team that used to come in every Sunday when they had been playing," said Stanley, who worked as a driver for Marlows for 32 years and in the distribution centre for Taylor Wimpey, in Newmarket, for more than two decades.

"My parents loved it –meeting people and the social side of it," he said. "Mum used to go out with the ladies darts team."

Walter died in 1984 and Lill caried on running the pub, with Stanley helping her, before she retired and lived in Cotton Lane, Bury St Edmunds.

As well as Stanley, the great-grandmother leaves daughter Wendy and stepdaughter Linda.

Her funeral will be held on Monday at West Suffolk Crematorium at 1pm.