Mary Gillham

Mary Eleanor Gillham MBE (26 November 1921 – 23 March 2013) was a British naturalist, university lecturer, and writer, who was resident for many years in Gwaelod y Garth and then Radyr, in Cardiff, Wales until her death.

Although born in a London suburb, and serving five wartime years in the Women's Land Army working on multiple farms, Mary Gillham spent much of her time in Wales.

As a post-war student in the University of Wales at Aberystwyth and Bangor, she gained a degree in agriculture, a first-class honours in botany, and a PhD in island ecology.

Gillham was born and brought up in Ealing, West London on 26 November 1921 to mother Edith Gertrude and father Charles Gillham, a secondary school teacher.

The family resided at Birbeck Road in South Ealing and she attended Little Ealing Infants and Junior School.

In 1927 the family moved to a newly built house at Gunnersbury Park (which later changed its name to Popes Lane), where she lived until her move to Wales in 1962.

She was also awarded a 2nd Class Award of the Royal Life-Saving Society in 1937.

Gillham attended Ealing County School for Girls, where she earned her Clerical Assistant's Grade I in April 1938, which would qualify her to later work at London City Council office in Westminster.

This wasn't her natural habitat therefore when war was declared in 1939 she happily signed up to the Women's Land Army where she served five years on various farms milking cows, helping the vet on his rounds and learning how to be a hands-on land girl.

When World War II ended in 1945, as a former member of the Women's Land Army, Gillham was eligible for a grant to go to university; something her family couldn't have afforded in peace-time.

She became a post-war student at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, gaining an undergraduate degree in Agriculture followed by a first-class honours in Botany in 1949.

She was also involved in extracurricular activities at university, becoming captain of the gymnastics, folk dance, rowing and swim team.

At university Gillham fell in love with the coast and began a lifelong study of seabird islands, with research on Skomer and Skokholm.

In 1953 she completed her PhD in Island Ecology at the University of Wales, Bangor, with her thesis researching the effects of seabirds on the vegetation of islands, based on research carried out on the islands off the Pembroke coast.

Her PhD was supervised by Professor Lily Newton, who Gillham later dedicated her book 'Sub-Antarctic Sanctuary: Summertime on Macquarie Island' to.

In 1953, Gillham started lecturing in the Botany department of Exeter University, where she worked for three and a half years.

Gillham left London by boat on 19 November 1956, arriving at New Zealand on 22 December 1956, after 331⁄2 days of sailing (stopping at Curaçao, Panama and Pitcairn on the way).

On 1 March 1957, she began a one-year Botany exchange lectureship and wardenship at Massey University, in Palmerston North, New Zealand, where she moved into Moginie House.

This position, along with small monetary grants from the British Council and from the University of New Zealand, kept her afloat financially whilst in New Zealand – where she could then undertake work on the commercial Muttonbird island of South-East Australia.

Gillham then moved to work as a Senior Demonstrator at the Department of Botany at University of Melbourne, Australia on 3 March 1958 during an exchange lectureship.

Spray-washed seabird colonies were her main love, and research on these took her to remote islands in many parts of the world, where she has lived in tents, huts, lighthouses, etc. Her major research projects were around the coasts of West Wales (her PhD thesis), Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and she was one of the first women scientists to join an Antarctic expedition (in 1959/60).

She lectured in the universities of Exeter (Devon), Massey (New Zealand), Melbourne (Australia), Kano (Nigeria), and worked in the Adult Education Department at University College Cardiff from 1961 until her retirement in 1988.

As a teacher of adult amateur naturalists, she saw her role as an interpreter of scientific data for the layman, and took to writing books and popular articles.

From 1961 to 1988, she lectured at the Adult Education Department at the University of Wales, Cardiff, until her retirement in 1988.

In 1963, Gillham worked as a Staff Tutor in the Biological Sciences at University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Department of Extramural Studies.

Here she lectured on numerous occasions for numerous courses, some examples including: a series of Travel Talks in 1963 (Tuesdays from 8–8.30 pm, for 11 weeks from 15 January to 9 April, and Fridays from 7-9pm), seven lectures on Coastal Vegetation in 1963, and 20 lectures in the course titled 'Environmental Studies in Natural History'; the latter being an annual course between 1970 and 1974.

She gave her Extramural lectures in a range of locations in Wales, including: Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, Abergavenny, Risca, Llwynypia, Pontypridd, Gwaelod-y-Garth, St. Donats, Bargoed, Hay, Bridgend, Barry, Cowbridge, Porthcawl, Bassaleg, and Llantwit Major, mostly on topics of botany and natural history.

Gillham also led numerous study tours for her students in locations closer to home: Guernsey (1969), the Shropshire Hills (1970), Monmouthshire (1970), Skomer Island (1978), Norfolk (1986), the Heritage Coast (1987), Gower (1987), Merthyr Mawr (1988), and Scilly Isles (1988), as well as further afield: Corfu (1969), Sardinia (1985) and Portugal (1986).

In 1970, she undertook a research project on Aldabra in the Indian Ocean, and subsequently took naturalists to the Seychelles.

In 1979, she was visiting scientist on an American expedition (by sailing ship) to an uninhabited island in the Bahamas, and she took parties to Jamaica, New England, and the Rocky Mountains.

Other expeditions were to North, West, East, and Central Africa, and Florida, and she led groups to various parts of Britain and Europe.

Active in various natural history and conservation bodies over several decades, Gillham was president of the Glamorgan Naturalists' Trust and of the Cardiff Naturalists Society.

Gillham gave lectures about plants in relation to drought at Kano University in the southern Sahara region of Nigeria, in the mid-1980s; however, the university was closed while she was there due to outbreak of war.

The majority of her students at the time were mature males seeking to learn the key to getting plants to grow in the desert.

In 2008, Gillham was awarded an MBE for services to nature conservation in South Wales.

Gillham's elder brother, John, lived at this house until his death in March 2009.

During her childhood Gillham enjoyed going on camping trips with her brother and parents, going to places such as Scotland, the Lake District as well as places closer to home.

It was unusual to go camping at the time therefore whilst on these trips Gillham had a passion for noting and sketching everything she saw.

On the eve of World War II, the family even went on a camping trip to Switzerland.

Gillham left school at age 16 to start work at London City Council office in Westminster.