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Celebrating Hampshire Historians

Innes, Kathleen Elizabeth (née Royds)

15 January 1883 – 27 March 1967

‘… to friends and acquaintances… she seemed a quiet, unassuming woman with intelligence and compassion who rarely spoke of her activities on the international stage, but threw herself into village life, becoming the unofficial village historian and president of several local organisations.  To international colleagues, she was an efficient organizer, tireless worker for rights and freedoms of peoples worldwide and an articulate spokeswoman of the international peace movement’ (Kathryn Harvey (1995)).

Kathleen Royds was born in Reading. Her father, William, was a physician and friend of Dr Joseph Stevens, formerly of St Mary Bourne, who moved to Reading in 1879.  Sixteen years later the Royds family moved to the village, where they lived in Stevens’ former house when Dr Royds took up the medical practice.

Following an impressive school career, Kathleen Royds enrolled at Cambridge and gained the Teacher’s Training Diploma.  She began teaching, but also set her sights on a University degree (Cambridge did not award them to women at the time).  Her studies at London University included an extension course under the tutelage of W H HudsonWith his encouragement she published Coleridge and his poetry and Mrs Browning and her poetry.  In later years she dedicated The Bible as literature (1930) ‘to WHH, in grateful memory’.

During World War I, Royds went to Salonica with a unit of the Scottish Women’s Hospital and later worked with refugees, accompanying them on their exile to Corsica.  Her well-documented wartime experiences led her into politics and pacifism and before the conflict ended, she had become secretary of the British Section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

In 1922 she married George Innes, continuing in her work for the WILPF and publishing and broadcasting widely for the peace and suffrage movements.  It was in the mid 1920s that she became a Quaker.

In 1938 Kathleen and George Innes retired to St Mary Bourne where they joined in the life of the village, while at the same time continuing their interest in world affairs.  Kathleen’s love of the village and its surrounds prompted her to collect material, with the help of other women, for St Mary Bourne Records: Notes on Events 1896-1946. This ‘experiment’ in recording village history was intended as an example to encourage others to follow suit.  Her book, Life in a Hampshire Village, appeared at the end of the war and her Village Records, written annually, were deposited with the county archivist.

Sources

Driven by War into Politics! : A Feminist Biography of Kathleen Innes, PhD thesis by Kathryn Harvey, Dept of English, University of Alberta (1995).

Portrait

Kathleen Innes when she lived in Hampshire

Kathleen Innes when she lived in St Mary Bourne

Contribution to county’s history

Historical study of villages in the Bourne valley.  Notes on various Hampshire figures.

Relevant published works

  • LiLife in a Hampshire Village (1944) Atheneum Press

  • St Mary Bourne Records: Notes on Events 1896 – 1946 (1947)

  • Hampshire Pilgrimages (1948) London: William Sessions

  • Recording Village History: An Experiment in St Mary Bourne Hampshire Review June 1950 73-5

  • Village Story: St Mary Bourne, Hampshire (1955)

  • Bourne Valley Anthology (ed compilation) Holmes (c 1963)

Critical Comments

Other Comments

Contributor

Dave Allen, October 2021; revised Dave Allen & Erica Tinsley, January 2023

Key Words

Local history, feminism, pacifism

Any queries or further suggestions for this part of the list should be addressed to celebrating@hantsfieldclub.org.uk.

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