Margaret Steuart Pollard

Margaret Steuart Pollard (née Gladstone; 1 March 1904 – 13 November 1996) was a poet and bard of the Cornish language. She was the founding member of Ferguson's Gang, a secret society of supporters of the National Trust, who had their headquarters at Shalford Mill.^[1]

From 1920, she attended Newnham College, Cambridge,^[2] where she was the first woman to gain first-class honours in Oriental Languages. She married Captain Frank Pollard, an expert on Cornish history, and they lived in Truro, Cornwall. By 1938, she had become a bard, and a member of the Cornish Gorsedd. She published Bewnans Alysaryn, a Cornish-language miracle play, in 1941.^[3] She was an enthusiastic supporter of campaigns to defend the landscape, language and traditions of Cornwall and rural England. On one occasion she donated £100 to the National Trust as part of Ferguson's Gang, wearing a full mask to preserve her anonymity.^[4]

In 1947, a book about her home county, entitled Cornwall, that she had written was published by Paul Elek.^[5] She has been described as "humorous, perceptive, and intelligent".^[3] In 1951 she converted to Roman Catholicism, and in 1973 built a Roman Catholic church dedicated to Our Lady of the Portal and St Piran on the site of a medieval chapel in Truro. For this she received the Benemerenti Medal from the Pope.^[4]

She remained an active poet and translator throughout her long life. She had given away much of her inherited wealth after her husband's death in 1968 and lived in a one-up-one-down, which was an old tin miner's cottage on Richmond Hill, Truro.^[6] She remained a romantic figure, dressed as she was in a long skirt and a scarf wrapped around her head. She died at the age of 93 on 13 November 1996 at Truro.^[3]

She was the great great-niece of former prime minister William Ewart Gladstone.^[4]

References

• Cornwall portal

1. Bagnall, Polly (2012). Ferguson- Exhibition Catalogue.
2. Limb, Sue (2014). Breaking Bounds: Six Newnham Lives. Newnham College, Cambridge. ISBN 978-0993071508.
3. Jenkin, Ann Trevenen (7 December 1996). "Obituary: Margaret Pollard". The Independent. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
4. Polly Bagnall & Sally Beck (2015). Ferguson's Gang: The Remarkable Story of the National Trust Gangsters. Pavilion Books. p. 10. ISBN 978-1909881716.
5. Pollard, Peggy (1947). Cornwall. London: Paul Elek.
6. Pollard, Peggy (1947) Cornwall. London: Paul Elek, pp. 11-13

Further reading

• Murdoch, Brian (2004). "Pollard [née Gladstone], Margaret Steuart". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/64043. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)