Winifred Brenchley

Winifred Elsie Brenchley OBE, DSc (Lond), FLS, FRES (1883–1953), an agricultural botanist who worked at the Rothamsted Research Station.

She was educated at James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich, where one of her teachers was the well-known botanist Dr Lilian Clarke.

At the school, the new science-based study provided an alternative to the earlier emphasis on practical apprenticeship training, thus opening up male-dominated horticultural trades to women.

Brenchley won the Royal Horticultural Society Silver Gilt medal but gave up gardening to study botany.

[7] The quality of her work was soon apparent and after a year she became a permanent employee as head of the Botany Department, a post she held until her retirement at 65.

She was also bringing together vast quantities of unpublished material in her research notebooks, but she suffered a severe stroke and died in Harpenden on 27, October, 1953.