Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild DBE FRS (5 August 1908 – 20 January 2005)[2] was a British natural scientist and author with contributions to zoology, entomology, and botany.

[4] Her father had described about 500 new species of flea, and her uncle Lionel Walter Rothschild had built a private natural history museum at Tring.

They hurried home on the first westward train but, unable to pay, had to borrow money from a Hungarian passenger who commented "This is the proudest moment of my life.

[5] During World War II, Rothschild was recruited to work at Bletchley Park on codebreaking with Alan Turing and was awarded a Defence Medal by the British government for her efforts.

[8][7] The estate also served as a hospital for wounded military personnel, including her future husband, Captain George Lane.

[12] Rothschild supported many social causes including animal welfare,[9] free milk for children in schools,[7] and gay rights by contributing to the Wolfenden Report which resulted in decriminalising "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private".

Along with Professor G. Harris, Rothschild determined that myxomatosis, a virus affecting tapeti and brush rabbits, was spread by fleas, not mosquitoes as previously understood.

This led to further work to identify the compounds synthesized by insects such as Burnet moth and collaboration with Tadeusz Reichstein to show that a monarch butterfly's toxicity comes from milkweed, its larval host plant.

[13] This work was initially inspired by observations Rothschild made during an anthrax outbreak in the 1930s, but did not begin in earnest until around 60 years later.

In response to a comment that it would take 1,000 years to reproduce a medieval meadow, she said "I could make a very good imitation in ten...it took me fifteen.

[17] The pioneer of British Art Therapy, Edward Adamson and his partner and collaborator, John Timlin, were regular visitors to Ashton Wold.

Between 1983 and 1997, the influential Adamson Collection of 6,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics by people living with major mental disorder at Netherne Hospital, created with Adamson's encouragement in his progressive art studios at the hospital, was housed and displayed to the public in a medieval barn at Ashton.