Delightful dance

Mollie, who celebrated her 80th birthday shortly before Christmas, has been a pivotal figure in the cultural life of the town since her teens.

Her Tanwood School for Performing Arts has helped to set countless professional dancers and other performers on exciting career paths, and the number of prizes won by pupils in competitions over the years runs comfortably into the thousands.

Mollie said: "I started teaching at Ferndale Road in 1944, and then ten years later moved to Bath Road."

In the years and decades since then, Swindon has gone from being a relatively small town, albeit a prosperous one, to being one of the largest population centres in the region.

Mollie, who married husband John when she was 18, remembers a time when there was hardly any motor traffic on the roads. Those were the before many now-familiar parts of the town, such as Covingham and Nythe, simply didn't exist.

Mollie's parents, Sidney and Ethel Woodcock, lived in Osborne Street. Sidney worked at the Railway Works as a carriage finisher, and Mollie was the third of five children.

As Mollie told an interviewer during her school's 60th anniversary celebrations: "I dreamed of learning to dance, but with five of us to support, they couldn't afford the lessons.

"My mother thought it was more important to put food on the table."

Undaunted, Mollie raised the money for lessons by darning the family's socks, and also passed on the things she learned to local children. She was not yet 16 when she staged her first show at a church hall - which was packed out.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

The school of dance caters for pupils aged from two to adult, and expertly covers styles as diverse as tap, jazz and Greek. Catherine Zeta-Jones and the late Diana Dors are among the major stars helped on their way to fame by their lessons at Tanwood. Much more detailed information about the school's history and achievements can be found by visiting www.tanwood.co.uk