Winners Revisited: Sally Maudlin

Sally was the sole big winner on 22 June 2024 after RG9 4BX landed our weekly Millionaire Street prize in Shiplake in Oxfordshire. Every ticket was worth £410,995, but Sally banked £821,990 with her two tickets. The rest of the prize pot was shared among players in the wider RG9 4 postcode area.

Sally was so stunned when the whopping prize hit her bank account she had to ask Alexa how much it was.

Sally said: “When I saw the money in my account, I thought it didn’t look quite right. I saw £822 and wasn’t sure if the money had come in or gone out. Then it was just more noughts.

“I had to ask Alexa, ‘what does eight two two zero zero zero mean?’”

She added: “After the money went in, I left it there for a while just to look at it. Then I went to Tesco’s, came back and looked at it again. I even looked at it in the middle of the night.

“When I got brave enough, I headed into the bank because you can’t transfer that much money over the phone.

“We’re still all trying to absorb the magnitude of what’s happened to us.”

At the time of her win, Sally revealed she longed to buy her own home after spending her married life in tied cottages with farm worker hubby Murray - and pointed to a cute model cottage on her grandson's train set as her dream house.

A year later the cash has meant the mum-of-two was able to pick up the keys to her own little haven. The extended quaint brick semi, just a few miles from her winning postcode address, is on the fringe of a thriving Oxfordshire village and backs onto rolling fields that Murray will work in.

Sally said: “Having somewhere so beautiful has been my dream. The day we got the keys to the house I said to my husband, ‘you unlock the door’. I was scared it wasn’t real."

“I came round the corner and actually hugged the brick wall because it was my brick wall, the soil in the garden is our soil, our fence posts. Even the tiles in the bathroom. I went round touching everything because such a beautiful thing had happened to us.

“We did look at quite a lot of properties. But it took us almost a year to find this. It was perfect inside and just felt like home already.

“Not long after we moved in, Murray was pottering around in his shed. It was important for me to see him pottering around in his own garden. I never thought in a million years that he would have his own garage or shed for his own stuff.

“Murray has worked hard all his life. That’s been one of the biggest things, for him to be able to chill some.”

She added: “I like to keep things looking as beautiful as they are. I feel like the housekeeper or caretaker of someone else's beautiful home.”

Sally's daughter told how the win has transformed her mum's life - as well as giving the rest of the family peace of mind.

The shop assistant said: “I don’t have to worry about my mum now. She still worries about me, but I don't have to worry about her. That's life changing.

“It's nice to do things that we've never had a chance to do before like go out together for breakfast, lunch or dinner and not have to worry about it.

“The day after the win we went into Reading and mum wanted to buy me a necklace that was £100. But I was saying, ‘don't spend money, don't spend money!’”

Even now, Sally is still trying to come to terms with her enormous prize pot.

She said: “You don't expect to win but hope that you might. I'm not sure that it's ever going to sink in.

She added: “It opens a magical world. Go out there and have a go.”