In Memoriam

We remember with great fondness members of our College community who have passed away this year and our thoughts are with their families and loved ones.

Sandra (“Alex”) Saville (English, 1990) (22/3/39-29/9/19)

Alex was born in Gravesend, attending Walthamstow Hall in Sevenoaks gaining A levels in English, French and History in 1957. As was customary at the time she went on to secretarial college working in London through the 1960s. She held 3 glamourous secretarial positions including secretary to MP Reginald Maudling and then Robert Runcie. In 1969 Alex married Reverend Jeremy Saville (son of the children’s author Malcolm Saville) and settled into parish life and motherhood. 20 years later when Jeremy became Rector of Ashdon and Hadstock, Alex decided to apply to Cambridge (Due to its proximity and being able to live at home). Lucy Cavendish was recommended as the college most open to mature students. Following an interview in November 1989 she was given a conditional offer on the basis of gaining a B in English A level in 6 months. This she did and spent 3 very happy years at Lucy Cavendish particularly loving her work on Oscar Wilde and Iris Murdoch. Despite people asking Alex what she was going to do with her degree she was never tempted by a career (her sole aim being for education’s sake and to fulfil her intellectual potential) . However Alex then went on to start and lead Shakespeare, Poetry and Reading groups for the next 30 years up to her death, inspiring dozens of people who like her had not had the chance to study Literature. Alex was a natural teacher and saw the potential in people from all backgrounds.

Caron Freeborn (right) with her Connections partner Cecilia Wong in 2019

Caron Freeborn (English, 1992) written by alumna Lizzie Speller (Classics, 1992) (16/01/1966-26/04/2020)

This is an obituary that I never imagined writing. I still feel that Caron could be hovering over me, rolling her eyes at my punctuation.

We met when we both came up to Lucy Cavendish in 1992 where she read English. I was scared of her and she was wary of me. She was urban to the bone and claimed that all countryside was prowling ground for axe-murderers. Her father had drunk in the notorious Blind Beggar in the East End of London and she had two dogs, her beloved Auch and Blake. I was fifteen years older, the mother of three and came from the Cotswolds. She smoked liquorice roll-ups. I liked Fruit ‘n Nut bars.

Yet transformation is at the heart of what Cambridge and Lucy Cavendish make possible. In one term superficial difference became irrelevant in face of a shared love of books, argument; a passion for politics, feminism and Country and Western. We wrote a novel together and ran an extended riff on life for twenty-seven years.

In that time Caron became so many things to so many people but passion drove her, always. When she arrived at Lucy she was still in the shadow of agoraphobia and we would walk to lectures together. She was phobic about dentists and had agonising tooth problems. But she was dogged and brave: she never missed a lecture, she vomited every time she had a dental appointment, but she had the work done. She started going to the theatre if promised a seat near the back and by the aisle. She decided to join my Ancient Greek supervisions, which usually ended with our supervisor and us in hysterics. Eventually we set off to France, her first trip abroad, with Caron’s hugely tolerant partner, Chris.

Caron was clever, intellectually challenging and unique. Her knowledge and love of Shakespeare and of Rhetoric was daunting. Her brilliant dissertation on Lady Mary Wroth (aptly called ‘A Constellation of Female Friendship’) was all her original research on micro-fiche. I still have a copy. She won the BT Scholarship in 1994. The then President, Dame Anne Warburton, saw her stellar potential and remained in touch with her for years. She took her to meetings as speaker, including addressing an audience of 500 Women’s Institute members, she introduced her to Queen Margrethe of Denmark (they smoked together). Caron never looked back. Some years on Caron and Chris had two sons, Jude and Gabe. Gone were the roll-ups, in came fitness and, eventually, serious running. She learned to cook.

She taught Tragedy at Queen’s as well as in college. She wrote and sold a novel, and then two more. She got a Doctorate. She said she would never write poetry but then did. She said she would only write sonnets but didn’t. She wrote witty, gritty accounts of being a woman, being a bad woman, of sexuality and compromise, of pretence, poverty and survival. Professor Eleanor Margaret Burbidge, written by Emeritus Fellow Dr Jane M. Renfrew (12/08/1919-05/04/2020) Professor Burbidge was made an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College in 1971. She was a very distinguished astronomer and she established that the earth’s chemical elements were formed inside stars. She was the principal author of the watershed paper ‘Synthesis of the Elements in the Stars’ in Reviews of Modern Physics (1957). Way back at the start we’d had a game of choosing each other’s most and least promising alternative careers. I said she’d be a Music Hall Star (least likely: an organic gardener). That joke was inspired. Once she started teaching at Anglia Ruskin Caron brought poetry not just to students or the university but into the wider city and then beyond it. She was an amazing, compelling, performance poet; audiences loved her witty yet serious, sometimes shocking, delivery and, possibly, her body-as-text-tattoos. Generous and determined, she encouraged others: students’ anyone who wrote, to be courageous and bring their works to open mic evenings. But there were other important aspects to her life: she was always involved in the experience and educational outreach in autism and she became a deeply involved member of her local church.

Her premature loss, so soon after a diagnosis of cervical cancer, was very sudden. It left Chris, the boys, her mother and her friends, and all those in these worlds she’d invigorated, stunned and unbelieving.

Caron was a life-force, the least likely to be dead person I’ve ever known. But what she started will run on in the ideas, initiatives and creativity of others. She was changed

by Cambridge and she, in turn, changed it. Her interest in stars began early in childhood and was fundamental to her career. She was educated at UCL (BA 1939, PhD 1943) and worked for a while at the University of London Observatory. In the 1960s and 70s she worked on galaxy rotation curves and quasars and discovered the most distant astronomical object known at that time. In the 1980s and 90s she helped develop and utilise the Faint Objects Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope.

She was also known for her opposition to discrimination against women, which she had encountered in her career. She held many important posts both in Britain and America. Among these was Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory 1973-5, President of the American Astronomical Society 1976-78, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 1983.

She worked at the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, the California Institute of Technology, and at the University of California at San Diego. From 1979-1988 she was the first Director of the Centre for Astronomy and Space Sciences at UC San Diego.

Eleanor Margaret Peachy was born in Davenport, Stockport, UK. In 1948 she married Geoffrey Burbage, a theoretical physicist, later a theoretical astrophysicist, whom she met at UCL. He died in 2010. Margaret died at the age of 100, in San Francisco, in April 2020, after suffering a fall. She is survived by her daughter Sarah and a grandson.

Sylvia Le Mottée - née Craig (Education, 1971) (17/10/1929-20/10/2019)

Sylvia was born in Urmston, the youngest of 4 children of Archibald Craig and Edith Craig.

In September 1935 she started school at St Clements (primary) in Urmston and progressed quickly as by Christmas she was moved from the first class to the second class. Later Sylvia won the Vicars prize. Although not initially in the scholarship class, she requested to enter the scholarship exams and, in July of 1941, passed. Later she passed her School Certificate, got a job at Lewis’s Manchester, then for E. Griffiths Hughes.

She married John Le Mottée on 21st July 1951. During the years 1951-1955 they lived in Guernsey. Michael was born on the 4th of April 1955.

In September 1956 they moved to the L.S.A. Land Settlement Association Fen Drayton, a new life learning about farming and market gardening.

Andrew was born 22nd August 1957, Gillian was born on 1st January 1959. Due to family and jobs, they moved to Ware Hertfordshire. Phillip was born in Hertford on 8th May 1962. They moved again to the L.S.A. at Gt Abington in 1963. Robert Craig was born 7th April 1965.

“Christmas time 1966, I received a card from old school friend, she told me she was training to be a Domestic Science teacher. I mentioned to John ‘If she can do that, so can I’. With Johns encouragement I investigated and discovered it was, at the time, impractical but was suggested to try for Primary teaching at Saffron Walden College. I did so and I already had enough qualifications with my School Certificate, I was out of practice at writing essays. I took some ‘O’ levels the following year at Young St Further Education College. This was in Summer 1967. The head suggested I write a short essay there and then to see if I could sit English Language with the resit people in September. Guernsey, he said he would put me in for the ‘O’ level, and I would do part time studies to take 3 more the following July. So I studied Maths, history and English Literature. July arrived and I passed all my exams, getting grade 1 for English and Maths and passed History. With these results I started teacher training in September 1968.

The next three years were busy. I would get everyone to bed by about 8pm and then settle down to do my reading and assignments for 2 hours every night. There were long holidays from college, but still given a load of reading to be done.

At college it was coming up for the finals in 1971. I learned that Cambridge University had just started the Bachelor of Education degree. So I discussed it with John and he said have a go – so I went to Miss Collings for her to put my name forward. She asked me how I was going to cope I said I had shown I could manage by never missing lectures here! So she said I had to get high enough grades but she would put my name forward. I managed the grades and went for an interview at Lucy Cavendish College which was a Mature Women’s College. I was quite fearful as to what the interview would be like. It turned out to be almost like an afternoon tea and chat session with two of the college Dons. Both middle aged women, who were, it seemed, more interested in me as a person than an academic. I came away with the feeling that the old saying was right. If you get into Cambridge and were able to spell your name right you would pass! So I got a grant from the government for the extra year at University. There were 5 new B’Ed people in my year, all doing different main courses. I was the only one doing Sociology. But we all met up for the Education lectures. It was a totally different type of teaching and learning. You had to discipline yourself, they would lead but it was up to you to learn.”

Over this time period they moved house to Balsham and back to Gt. Abington.

The teaching positions held were at Chalkstone Middle school in Haverhill, first as a mainstream teacher and then went on to train to teach special needs children in what were termed remedial education classes. This maintained her passion for teaching as it gave a degree of freedom on approach to teaching where methods were adapted on a case by case way to get the best out of the children. She was a highly respected member of staff, and wellliked by pupils.

Sylvia maintained contact with the college regularly attending the summer garden parties and various college dinners throughout her teaching years. They finally moved to the youngest sons, Bob’s, in Kentford Suffolk in 2016 where they celebrated 65th year of marriage and then John passed on 29th July 2016. Sylvia passed on 20th October 2019.