Shop owner ran popular Maton’s with husband John for 21 years

The former proprietor of a well-known shop in Kidlington has died aged 94.

Glenys Maton ran Maton’s, in Oxford Road, with her husband John for 21 years.

The couple’s background had been in farming, but they took on the shop as a challenge in 1960.

By the time they retired in 1981, Mrs Maton said they had employed so many schoolchildren from Gosford Hill School that the shop had earned the nickname “the Gosford Hill School finishing school”.

She was born Glenys Thomas in Hungarton, Leicestershire, to Welsh parents Sarah and William Thomas, on November 22, 1930.

The youngest of four children, her father passed away when she was two and her mother remarried Robert Edward Thomas.

In 1937, aged seven, she moved near Fawley, south of Wantage, with her parents and two of her siblings, Margaret and Gwill, to Warren Farm, where Mr Thomas was employed as manager.

The family planned to stay for two years, but because of the Second World War were not allowed to move and ended up staying 25 years, departing in October 1962.

Miss Thomas and her siblings attended Fawley School and when she left she became a nurse, at one point working at Longworth Hospital.

The career choice was short-lived however, and she moved back to Warren Farm and took a job at Barratts shoe shop in Newbury.

SAnd it was while still at the farm that she met John Maton, a worker there who she helped with milking.

They married at the Methodist church in Newbury Street, Wantage on October 11, 1952.

Soon after they had their first son, Andrew, who would be followed by Peter, and at the start of the 1960s they moved to The Parade, Kidlington, and became proprietors of a village shop, which they named ‘Maton’s’, living in the three-bedroom flat above.

It sold sweets, chocolates, ice cream, toys and other assorted items, becoming a well-known community hub.

After Mr Maton passed away in 1991, Mrs Maton moved to Briar Close, Kidlington, then to a flat in retirement complex Cherwell Court, in Banbury Road, Kidlington.Glenys Maton died on April 4 in the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, following a short period of illness.

A funeral was held at South Oxfordshire Crematorium, in Garford on April 21. She is survived by sons, Andrew and Peter, their wives Gillian and Viv, four grandsons, James, Tom, Lewis and George and three great-grandchildren, Caitlyn, Ellis and Caspar.