Jane Ritchie made headlines after using her multi-millionpound inheritance to build a centre for vocational learning. This week her remarkable act won her The Northumbrian Association’s Hotspur Award. Chris Fay reports.

MANY people dream of inheriting millions of pounds from a distant relative and what they might do with the cash. Mansions, fast cars and endless holidays usually top the list, so when Jane Ritchie inherited £9m she could have spent the rest of her days living a life of luxury.

But Jane Ritchie is an unusual woman. Not for her a life of pampered hedonism. Instead, when her distant cousin died five years ago, aged 100, and left her £9m, she saw it as an opportunity to help others.

When the cheque arrived, Ms Ritchie treated herself to a nice hat and a short holiday in a posh hotel. Then the 60-year-old spinster from Wensleydale, despite losing £3m to the taxman, gave the rest away – realising her dream of building a vocational learning centre.

Some might call her actions eccentric, but that description could have been reserved for Ms Ritchie’s cousin – the woman who made it all possible.

Margery Freeman never had any children and, after the death of her husband, Reginald, about 35 years ago, she lived alone in the Yorkshire Dales.

She spent most of her time gardening and used her pension to pay her bills which, as she only heated one room in her house, did not amount to much.

She would eat cheap vegetables, rather than more expensive meat and would often darn clothes, rather than replace them. Her shoes were cheap plimsolls bought from Woolworths.

Because of her frugal lifestyle, Ms Freeman, who died shortly before her 101st birthday, was steadily amassing considerable wealth.

Her husband had been a ship’s captain and cash that she inherited over the years was shrewdly invested. Ms Ritchie, who would regularly visit her cousin, had no idea how much.

“I nearly fell off my chair when I found out,”

she says.

“She had always joked about leaving it to the cats’ home so I didn’t expect it would amount to much. But when you come into money unexpectedly I feel you should do something useful with it.”

Ms Ritchie, a Cambridge graduate, retired as manager for the County Durham Business and Learning Partnership in 2006, but had long since identified a gap in education provision which she hoped to fill.

“The trouble is that most schools cannot really provide the broad range of vocational training needed,” she said in 2007.

“Some major employers are helpful and involved but most businesses are small and there is a limit to how many schoolchildren they can take under their wing.”

The answer was The Work Place, which Ms Ritchie eventually built in Heighington Lane, Newton Aycliffe Business Park, County Durham, to provide simulated work experience to 14 to 19-year-olds, and help them into work.

Several attempts to raise the funding, the first more than 15 years ago, had failed. So when Ms Ritchie inherited the money there was no stopping her.

No expense has been spared at the centre which has workshops and studios and a medical annex with artificial human bodies and an ambulance.

But the expense has been entirely for the benefit of others.

“When I get to meet St Peter, I didn’t want to have to ask any embarrassing questions,”

explains Ms Ritchie.

“I’ve got a nice house with two dogs and two cats and I’m too busy for holidays.”

TRUE to form, while she does have an MBE for services to business and education links, Ms Ritchie did not go to the Buckingham Palace to receive it. Instead, Lord Crathorne, Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire, visited the slightly less grand Brentwood Lodge care home, in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, where her cousin had spent her last few years to present it.

Not that Ms Ritchie would have been overawed.

On Wednesday night she was at the House of Commons for the Northumbrian Association annual dinner, where she was told of her Hotspur Award.

Speaking at the event, Margaret Fay, chairwoman of One North East, praised Ms Ritchie’s remarkable generosity.

“She remembered her time in employment training and said ‘I’m going to create something’.

“She put millions of her own personal money into creating The Work Place, where young people can go to experience work, to prepare them for the whole idea of what work might offer them,” said Ms Fay.

“She has put her inheritance into the community she had worked in for many years.”

Ms Ritchie will be formally presented with the award, which last year was won by Sir Bobby Robson and Anthony Sargent, of the Sage, Gateshead, in October.