My mother, Anne Mohyuddin, who has died aged 87, was a stalwart of health-food retailing in the north-west of England. Her business, the Health Food Centre, was a successful one, with many loyal customers making special visits to her shops to find products that were not widely available.
Born in Gosforth, Cumbria, the eldest child of Jessie (nee Nicholas), a domestic servant, and Isaac Wilson, a carpenter and wheelwright who with his brothers owned a sawmill, Anne attended Whitehaven grammar school. She left aged 16 and went to work in a local accountant’s office, developing skills that she retained throughout her adult life, including the ability to accurately add up a column of numbers as quickly as she could run her finger down them.
Isaac died when Anne was in her early 20s, and the family moved to Sheffield, where Jessie had relatives. Anne began working at the General Electric Company, and it was there in 1956 that she met Iftikhar Mohyuddin, who had come from Pakistan to Sheffield University to read for his PhD in chemical engineering and was doing work experience. Anne was taking molten samples from a kiln by leaning in over the top. Iftikhar thought that was too dangerous and designed and made a window into the kiln so that Anne could take the samples safely.
Having each moved to London for work, they were married in 1957 in a church in Harrow, then later the same day at the Shah Jahan mosque in Woking (the nearest mosque with an imam that was prepared to marry them). Their marriage made the local press under the headline “Kenton Bride Has Two Weddings”. In 1963 they had a daughter, Farida, and, shortly afterwards, moved to Pakistan for my father to take up a post as principal of the Small Industries Institute in Lahore. They returned to the UK 18 months later, and settled in Aughton, Ormskirk, near to the Pilkington glass company, where Iftikhar was part of the research team that developed the float glass technique. He was made redundant in 1970, and, his own ill-health having led him to explore alternative therapies, Iftikhar and Anne decided to establish a health-food business.
Initially they had one Health Food Centre in Ulverston, Cumbria. They moved to Rochdale, Lancashire, shortly before adopting me in 1976, and then to Bolton. My mother ran their main shop in Bolton, supplying their branches in Rochdale, Burnley and Oldham. She never used a computer, preferring to do her accounts manually, and retained in her head all the product information she needed to help customers. In the late 1980s Anne became a fellow of the Institute of Health Food Retailing (now the Health Food Institute). After her retirement in 2005 she was often stopped in the street by former customers.
Anne was a football fan, following the fortunes of Liverpool FC. Her sense of humour shone through her wide smile.
Iftikhar died in 2011. Anne is survived by me and Farida, four grandchildren and one great-grandson.
