This site is a tribute to Chris Olende. She is much loved and will always be remembered.

The ceremony will also be live streamed on the internet. To access the live stream, email Ken at: ken.olende@gmail.com for the login details.

Chris’s family came from Bethnal Green in London’s East End. Both her parents, Alfred Knell and Grace Sargeant, came from large working-class families. Alfred became an engineers’ pattern maker (carving in wood parts that would later be cast in metal for machinery) and built a successful business with a workshop on Upper Street in Islington. He and his wife moved out to the leafy suburb of Woodford, and Chris and her older brother Ralph grew up around Epping Forest. The family regularly rode out into the forest on two tandem bicycles. In Woodford Chris developed her love of nature and gardening, did well at school – at the Woodford County High School for Girls – and took ballet classes.

She went on to Nottingham university where she studied biology and developed a love for trad jazz, then took the big step of moving to Canada in the early 1960s to do post graduate work at the University of Western Ontario in the Canadian city of London. Here she met the Kenyan student Shem Arungu Olende, got married and her eldest son, Ken was born.
The couple moved to London, England, where Chris taught at a convent school, while her husband studied. Their second son, Steve was born, and they lived in Notting Hill, Kingston and Mecklenburgh Square, before moving to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. A third son, Conrad was born during a spell back in Britain.

At the beginning of the 1970s the marriage broke up and Chris returned to London with the three boys. The family lived in Woodford and Chris was involved in establishing the local playgroup network for mothers with young children. She taught English as a second language in evening classes and went on to become a biology teacher at Braeside school in Buckhurst Hill.

In 1978 the family moved to Walthamstow, where she would stay for the rest of her life. Once the boys had all left school, she was able to expand her interests and activities, switching to working as allotment officer for Waltham Forest council (overseeing sites where urban people could grow vegetables and other plants). She kept her own allotments, at one time growing vegetables on three. She became active in the environmental movement, through the Green party and various other organisations. She returned to her love for classical music and trad jazz, going dancing once or twice a week. She became well known around Walthamstow and was busy in the area long after her retirement, right up until the onset of the Covid pandemic and her failing health in the past couple of years. She kept in touch with friends from throughout her life and she will be sorely missed by friends and family alike.