Jennie Phyllis Coy

We are very grateful to Jennie Coy’s sister, Maureen Ibbott, for the following appreciation of her life.

Jennie Coy: born 18 December 1938; died 10 April 2010

Jennie Phyllis Coy was born in Margate in Kent on 18 December 1838. She was an archaeozoologist, teacher, school governor, lecturer, naturalist, Jacob sheep lover, fan of Ireland, youth hosteller, wartime evacuee, Cuban cigar smoker, folk music devotee, hunter, dog lover, good shot, Labour party activist and countryside lover to name but a few of her interests.

She was the first of the Coy family to go to university (King’s in London) and at various times taught science and maths at schools in Rutland, Suffolk, Leicester and Hackney.

Her best-known achievements were in archaeology and relate to her work on faunal remains at Southampton University, especially the animal bones for the Mary Rose. She participated in hundreds of excavations, field studies and conferences, and co-wrote many research papers and books, including contributions to Danebury Excavations 1969–78, ‘Animal bones from The Rumps’ in Cornish Archaeology, and First Aid for Animal Bones.

Jennie was passionate about the environment and read all the early ecological research twenty years before it became a fashionable cause. In Ireland she would spend many months of every year in her hillside cabin above Schull, in West Cork, bought as a ruin and a 30-minute uphill hike from the nearest farm track. The cabin was a simple retreat from a busy life, stocked with maps, bird-spotting guides, notebooks, Irish literature, Murphey’s stout and whiskey.