Women in Sherry: Millie Swithinbank

Bridget Amelia Swithinbank was born in a village in greater London one hundred years ago. After school, she studied book keeping and shorthand. During the war she worked in a light bulb factory and helped with the removal of railings from London gardens, so that the latter could be melted down to make armaments.

After the war, she travelled in Europe with her husband. Nobody seems sure how or why she went to Jerez, but she arrived in 1952, having lost her husband. She was tall, elegant and blonde, with bright blue eyes; a real English rose. She became secretary to Guy Dingwall Williams (known to all as ”Don Guido”), son of Alexander Dingwall Williams and Amy Humbert, who had been running Williams & Humbert since 1911. Don Guido had married Nina Milward in 1921 and she bore him a daughter, Anne Christine Williams, who would eventually marry Beltran Domecq.

Anyway, Millie Swithinbank was very diplomatic and had a natural flair for human relations. As well as her secretarial job, she took on the visitors’ department and, effectively, public relations. She had great charm and a very English sense of humour, and got along well with all the Spanish people, even if she had a rather serious, particular side.  Her Spanish, however was never up to much. She was a Briton who didn’t really want to be a Jerezana – though she was more than fond of Fino, paella and cocido (stew)!

When in 1959 Don Guido passed away, Millie continued to run the visitors’ department and took on the role of British Vice Consul, formerly held by her boss. She took to the honorary job, dealing daily with her compatriots, and in just one year, W&H received 40,000 visits!

For her dedication and good work as Vice Consul, Millie was awarded the MBE by the Queen in 1970, thus becoming a Dame.  Since her arrival in Jerez, she lived at the now gone Hotel Los Cisnes until she met Mike Barnett, an English highways engineer who was working on the planning of the naval base at Rota. They moved into a house together, with their dog George.

In 1972 Rumasa, in a surprise move, took over Williams & Humbert for 1 thousand million pesetas. Millie seemed more worried that the Vice Consulate could continue at the bodegas. After her retirement, she returned to Britain, and by the 1980s she was in a care home, helped by her two sisters. She died at the end of the decade, and that attractive, efficient Englishwoman who adored Fino, paella and cocido, who hated wasting time in hairdressers, and who never lost her English ways after all that time in Spain, was heard from no more.