Lady Plowden was born Bridget Horatia Richmond at Rounton Grange, East Rounton, Yorkshire, the second daughter and second child of the five children of Admiral Sir Herbert William Richmond (1871–1946), naval officer, and later master of Downing College, Cambridge, and his wife, Florence Elsa (1879/80–1971).
[3] Lady Plowden held roles in numerous charitable organisations, particularly those involving children.
The Ford Foundation funded the Anglo-American primary schools project, and published over twenty booklets in the United States.
Her report emphasized the need for education through discovery rather than through instruction, and that creativity and adaptability were essential in a global economy.
It insisted that parents had a right to annual reports and recommended objective testing of attainment.
[7][8] Lady Plowden remained active into her 80s, but by the 1990s her husband's ill health necessitated a move to live full-time at Martels Manor in Barnston, Essex.