A WELL-KNOWN York charity is reaching the end of an era.

The Deanne Gee Memorial Fund has held its final monthly jumble sale, 38 years after the charity was set up.

Deanne’s mother Joyce launched the fund to help youngsters with physical and mental difficulties, mainly aged from birth to 18 months, after Deanne’s death from spinalmuscle atrophy in 1980, at the age of just 14.

Joyce, of Kingsway North, Clifton, had fundraised in aid of charity for seven years before setting up the fund in her daughter’s memory and, over the past 45 years, she has raised more than £1million to help hundreds of children throughout York and North Yorkshire.

Joyce was awarded a BEM (British Empire Medal) for her services to children and young people with special needs in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2015.

It was presented by Lord Lieutenant Barry Dodd, who died recently, at County Hall in Northallerton.

Recently, the fund has bought a self-propelled wheelchair for one little boy, a wheelchair canopy and a car seat, and is in the process of refurbishing another, with yet another in its sights for a refurb.

Despite ending the popular monthly sales, which took place at St Luke’s church hall on Burton Stone Lane, Joyce insists that both the charity and her fundraising efforts will carry on, with table top sales in her garden, an occasional stall at York Hospital and Fothergill Homes in Avenue Road and the odd car boot sale.

She said: “We’ve had some wonderful times and met some wonderful people, but there is plenty of work to do yet.

“I just wanted to thank all the people who have supported us over the years and all the volunteers and trustees.

“I’m not a one-man band.”