A FORMER Bletchley Park codebreaker, debutante, independent Hampshire county councillor and enthusiastic supporter of Priors Dean Church has died aged 101.
Lady Anne Jaffray moved opposite the historic church – parts of which date back to the 11th century – with her second husband, Baronet, and Lieutenant-Colonel, Sir William Jaffray, in 1950.
She soon became a church warden at the historic church between Petersfield and Alton and a keen fundraiser for it.
She was also a stalwart member of the Women’s Institute and the women’s section of the Royal British Legion.
She was born on September 11, 1919, as Anne Paget, only daughter of Captain John Otho Paget MC, of the Royal Sussex Regiment and his wife Gertrude, the widow of Captain Williams MC, also of the Royal Sussex.
She also spent a term at Heidelberg University and met Joachim von Ribbentrop, who served as minister of foreign affairs of Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945.
Lady Anne later recalled him as “a sinister man… alarmingly cold and polite”.
In 1939 she was presented at court at Buckingham Palace, as one of that spring’s debutantes.
When the Second World War broke out, she joined the Ministry of Information, employed to eavesdrop on the broadcasts of foreign journalists, cutting them off if they veered from the approved script.
In April 1940 her knowledge of German secured her a post at Bletchley Park, where she worked in Hut 3, the nerve centre of the decoding operation.
She worked under Commander Malcolm Saunders and Sir Herbert Marchant, making sense of the different messages from the code breakers to identify enemy threats.
One of her intercepts identified the position of the German pocket battleship, the Bismarck, that was sunk in May 1941.
Her work was deemed of sufficient importance to evade petrol rationing, so when not working there, she headed to London and enjoyed its nightlife.
She did not speak of Bletchley for many years – having signed the Official Secrets Act, she always insisted she had worked in the Foreign Office.
In 1942 Anne married Sir John Worsley-Taylor, Baronet, whom she considered “dull” but “faithful”.
She gave up her work at Bletchley when she was pregnant with her daughter Annette.
Annette became celebrated in the 1970s when she set up the London Designer Collections fashion week.
Her marriage was not a happy one, and in a somewhat sensational divorce case, he accused her of being greedy and extravagant.
In return she counter-claimed he was mean, and the divorce was granted in 1950.
Two years later Sir John was found dead at the foot of the stairs of his Queen’s Gate Gardens flat.
It was later found he had consumed a bottle of whisky before his fall.
In 1950 she married Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Jaffray and they had one son, but in 1953 she was suddenly widowed.
She ran the house at Priors Dean for many years as her young family grew up.
During this time, she was much supported in Hampshire by Sir William Makins and General Lord ‘Ma’ Jeffreys, who proved loyal allies.
As an independent, Lady Anne served on Hampshire County Council between 1964 and 1980, specialising in education.
She also crossed swords with prime minister Edward Heath, believing education should be independent rather than subject to change with each new government.
Representing the council, she met the Queen at the opening of Queen Elizabeth Country Park, near Petersfield.
Late in life she became a Roman Catholic and was a Dame of Grace of the Order of Malta.
After a turbulent phase in the 1980s, she moved to London.
Here she was received into the Catholic Church by Cardinal Basil Hume, and became a Dame of Grace of the Order of Malta, after organising a special bed for the Hospital for St John and St Elizabeth.
Lady Anne was presented to the Duchess of Cambridge on a late-life return to Bletchley Park in 2014.
She died on March 15 and is survived by her son, Baronet Sir William Jaffray, her daughter Annette having predeceased her in 2015.