Margaret E. Bradshaw
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Margaret Elizabeth Bradshaw was born in January 1926, and lived with her family on a farm in East Yorkshire. She was interested in plants from childhood. Bradshaw attended school in Bridlington and later in Leeds. After training as a teacher in Leeds, she taught in Derbyshire and then in Bishop Auckland.
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Botanical career
Bradshaw has focused on the plants of Upper Teesdale since the 1950s, recording locations of the unusual species that are found there and on their conservation. In 1951 she identified large-toothed Lady’s-mantle (Alchemilla subcrenata) in fields in Teesdale. She carried out research into the morphology and cytology of Lady’s-mantles as a student at Durham University and was awarded a PhD in 1959. She worked in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at Durham University from 1962 to 1983.
In the late 1960s, as part of the protest against construction of Cow Green Reservoir, the national importance of the flora of the Upper Teesdale became better known. It includes species that are otherwise alpines and the Teesdale violet (Viola rupestris). The land remaining around the reservoir was designated as the Moor House-Upper Teesdale National Nature Reserve, combining two previous nature reserves. In 1983 she moved to a farm in Devonshire and was employed to study the local rare plants by the Nature Conservancy Council. She returned to Teesdale in 1998 and continued to monitor plant populations there, also leading local volunteers. She has travelled around the area on horseback in her later years, having leaned to ride when she was five.