Dame Stephanie Shirley revisits Oswestry, the town she loves

Dame Stephanie Shirley is known more for getting rid of her personal fortune than she is for making it.

Over the past 20 years she says she is proud to have given away £57 million and says it is all thanks to the love she was given in the town of Oswestry.

It was a nostalgic return for Dame Stephanie, who toured the town after attending Oswestry Literary Festival to talk about her autobiography, Let it Go, which tells how as a computer and business genius she became the 11th richest woman in the UK and went on to give much of her fortune away.

She arrived in Britain in 1939 as an unaccompanied child refugee, part of the "kindertransport" project that helped Jewish children flee from Germany – and spent time living in Oswestry being cared for by an "Aunty and Uncle".

In a walkabout around Oswestry town centre with LitFest volunteer John Waine, Dame Stephanie told him that it was in the town that she found peace.

He took her on a trip down memory lane with visits to her old school – the former Oswestry Girls High School now the Beresford Gardens apartments – and the boarding house, known as Oakhurst, on the other side of town.

"She was thrilled at visiting her old school and showed me where the geography room had been and also the music room," Mr Waine said. "She also wanted to see the Croeswylan Stone, the remains of the cross that was placed at the edge of the town at the time of the plague."

Dame Stephanie was also taken to see the war memorial in the Cae Glas Park gates as well as the individual memorials to servicemen in the park itself.

"We called into Booka Bookshop and Dame Stephanie declared that Henley, where she now lives, needed just such a book shop, and also the Wynnstay, which she said had remained unchanged since she lived in the town.

"She said she had enjoyed every minute of her time in Oswestry. Her love of Oswestry is very aparent – she even called her cat Oswald."