Sylvia Barter

Originally trained as a singer at the Royal College of Music, she gave up her career on her marriage to Paul Spencer, who had himself briefly been an actor with the Anew McMaster touring company. After the Second World War and her divorce, she worked as an assistant house mistress at Cheltenham Ladies' College and a teacher at Pate's Junior School in Cheltenham in order to support the education of her son Nicholas. She returned to the stage in 1964, for a tour with the all-woman Osiris Repertory Company playing Shakespeare to schools and convents and then with Salisbury Arts Theatre. Thereafter she worked in repertory at Lincoln Theatre Royal (where her son was at the time director of productions) and at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, Worthing, Westcliff, the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch, the Arts Theatre, Ipswich, the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, the Theatre Royal, Bath, the Crucible, Sheffield and Birmingham Rep.