Her father, Edmund Douglas Archibald, 1851–1913, was a meteorologist and a Professor of Mathematics and by 1891 the family were living in her mother's native Scotland.
[2] Before World War I began, Archibald moved to London where she established herself as a sculptor of animals and portrait figures, working in wood, stone and with a variety of metals.
[3] In 1911 Archibald married the journalist Charles Clay, 1856–1941, and the couple lived at Hampstead in London then at Bletchingley in Surrey before, as a widow, she moved to Grasmere where she died in 1947.
[3][2] Outside of Scotland, Archibald exhibited works at the Royal Academy and with the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in London, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and at the Paris Salon.
[3] During 1906 and 1907, Archibald created a set of four stone sculptures of allegorical female figures for the facade of the Royal Bank of Scotland building in St Enoch Square in Glasgow.