A plaque in memory of a highly respected nurse will be placed on a piano at an award winning Gwynedd care home.

Music-loving Margaret Rotheram spent her final days living at Bryn Seiont Newydd, Pendine Park’s centre of excellence for dementia care on the outskirts of Caernarfon.

Margaret died peacefully aged 87 at Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor in the presence of her family and now  her daughter, Jackie Sudworth, has  presented the staff who cared for her at Bryn Seiont with the specially inscribed slate plaque.

Jackie said: “Dementia slowly took hold of my mother and she would forget things very quickly but her long term memory was very good and she could remember events clearly from many years ago.

“She loved singing and loved the musical sessions at Bryn Seiont Newydd where she had the very best of care.

“She was a very happy woman and always had a smile on her face and I hope the plaque in her memory will remind people of my mother and her broad smile.”

According to Jackie, her mother was born and raised in Talysarn, a small slate quarrying village in the Nantlle Valley, before marrying her husband Bob and moving to Liverpool.

“She and my father raised a family in Liverpool, I have three brothers and two sisters, but she didn’t like Liverpool that much and the family moved back to Talysarn and to the same house where my mother was born. She lived there until she moved to Bryn Seiont Newydd.”

Jackie added her mother met Bob in an unusual way.

“He was in the Army and he and my mother became pen pals. She would write to him while he was serving in the armed forces and he would write back. They eventually met and got married.

“Dad worked as a hospital technician in Liverpool but after they moved to Talysarn he had quite a few jobs including working at the Ferodo factory in Caernarfon. He passed away about seven years ago,” she said.

After returning to North Wales Margaret enrolled as a nurse and started work at Ysbyty Eryri in Caernarfon and later at the Ear, Nose and Throat department at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor.

Jackie added: “She was very good at her job and was well liked by patients and very respected by ward staff. She joined the Unison union and became one of their officials at the hospital. There again she was highly regarded.

“Later, after leaving her job at Ysbyty Gwynedd, she worked at a care home on Anglesey looking after people with dementia. Sadly she developed dementia too and had to go to Bryn Seiont Newydd.”

Jackie and her siblings, brothers Maiwyn, Martin and Mark and sisters Shereen and Tracey, visited Bryn Seiont Newydd regularly along with Margaret’s 17 grand-children and four great grandchildren.

“She enjoyed seeing them although she couldn’t always remember their names, dementia is such a cruel illness,” said Jackie.

Emyr Gibson, Pendine Park’s creative practitioner, said: “A heartfelt thanks to Jackie for this lovely memorial in remembrance of a truly special lady, her mother Margaret.

“She was a true character and was highly respected here at Bryn Seiont Newydd just as she was while working as a nurse at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor for more than 20 years.

“In her later years Margaret’s short term memory deteriorated  but whenever Nia Davies Williams, Bryn Seiont Newydd’s musician in residence, and I walked into a room her face would light up.

“She loved attending every singing session with us and we all thought the world of Margaret. She will always be remembered.”