Margaret Steuart Pollard, Date of Birth, Date of Death

    

Margaret Steuart Pollard

English Sanskrit scholar and Cornish language poet

Date of Birth: 01-Mar-1903

Date of Death: 13-Nov-1996

Profession: writer, poet

Nationality: United Kingdom

Zodiac Sign: Pisces


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About Margaret Steuart Pollard

  • Margaret Steuart "Peggy" Pollard, née Gladstone (1 March 1904 – 13 November 1996), was a scholar of Sanskrit, 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.
  • She was the great great-niece of Liberal prime minister William Gladstone.From 1920, she attended Newnham College, Cambridge, 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 a miracle play in Cornish Bewnans Alysaryn in 1941.
  • She was an enthusiastic supporter of campaigns to defend the landscape, language and traditions of Cornwall and rural England.
  • She formed Ferguson's Gang (under the mockney pseudonym Bill Stickers).
  • On one occasion, she donated £100 to the National Trust, wearing a full mask to preserve her anonymity.In 1947, a book about her home county, entitled Cornwall, that she had written was published by Paul Elek.
  • She has been described as "humorous, perceptive, and intelligent".
  • 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.Her husband died in 1968; however, she remained an active poet and translator.
  • She had given away much of her inherited wealth, and lived in a one-up-one-down, which was an old tin miner's cottage at Quenchwell, Kea, near Truro.
  • 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.

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