FARMER’S daughter turned librarian Sue Boddington is using her retirement to help keep Calne’s Heritage Centre afloat.

Ms Boddington, has just finished her latest historical book The Thegn’s Cree and will be giving all proceeds from its sale to the centre.

She said: “Having been closed since mid-March, Calne Heritage Centre, like many charities, has lost much revenue in sales and donations.

“No reopening date has yet been decided on and I am hoping the profits from my latest novel will bring in some much needed income.

“So if anyone who enjoys an historical novel has run out of reading material, they would be supporting Calne Heritage Centre when buying a copy of The Thegn’s Creed.

Ms Boddington, who was born and raised in Challymead between Melksham and Broughton Gifford where her father was a dairy farmer and ran a milk delivery business.

She is a former pupil of Fitzmaurice Grammar School, Bradford on Avon and studied at Bristol University and had planned to be a teacher but changed her mind.

She said: “I flirted with acting and singing for a while and then on a whim took a job with the Wiltshire Library Service, holding the posts of senior librarian adult learning and community librarian for the Calne area.

“ I helped to plan the new Calne Library and met the Queen when she officially opened the building in 2001. I retired in 2005 after 38 years’ service.”

She became involved in a group turning the old library into Calne Heritage Centre and has helped to run it ever since.

She said: “I feel it is vitally important to preserve the evidence of the long and fascinating history of the Calne area and to make the story more widely known. To feel linked to the past, understand the continuity, is so important in these disjointed times.”

She wrote her first novel when she was 12 and wrote several others over the years but inl 2016 approached a publisher for the first time and Hobnob Press published a novel she had set in 16th century Wiltshire.

Money from this book was donated to the heritage centre. She said: “My new novel, The Thegn’s Creed, published again by Hobnob Press is also set in Wiltshire, but in a much earlier period, in 1076. The action takes place in North and West Wiltshire, featuring Melksham, Calne, Malmesbury and other locations.

“Readers who are familiar with North and West Wiltshire will recognise some of the place names in this book because I have used the current names instead of the variations that were in use in 1076.

“It is many years now since I roamed with my combative border collie Moss, the area where I have sited my story.I cannot imagine a life without dogs. They feature in all my stories. But in my heart Challymead will always be my true home.”

The book priced at £8.95 from Devizes Books.