Katherine Maud Elisabeth Murray, M.A. B.Litt.

‘Betty’ Murray was born in Cambridge on 3 December 1909 and educated at three schools, chiefly Colchester County High School, before Somerville College, Oxford, where she read history. After graduation in 1931 she studied for a B.Litt., which was awarded in 1933 and her thesis published in 1935 under the title, The Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports. She won a studentship at the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem in 1933 and participated in excavations in Samaria. Back in England in 1935, she took up an appointment at Manchester University as tutor and librarian at Ashburne Hall, a women's hall of residence. Two years later Murray returned briefly to her old college as Mary Somerville Research Fellow and in 1938 embarked on a decade of service at Girton College, Cambridge, which included appointments as assistant tutor in history and registrar, 1938-44; domestic bursar, 1942-44; director of studies in architecture, 1943-8; junior bursar 1944-8 and Fellow, 1940-8. Murray had a strong background in education so that when in 1948 she was appointed principal of Bishop Otter College, a small Anglican teacher training college for women in Chichester, she knew she had found her vocation. At the time of her retirement in 1970 the intake of students had increased from 200 to 700, the range of subjects had been enlarged and the college had become co-educational. On Murray's initiative, a fine collection of pictures by contemporary British artists had been acquired and the college’s reputation was much enhanced. She settled contentedly into her west Sussex environment and remained there for the rest of her life. As a member of Chichester District Council from 1973 to 1987 conservation in all aspects of local life was her chief preoccupation. Pallant House was restored and put to use as an art gallery under her chairmanship and, a lover of natural beauty, she campaigned for the conservation of the countryside (including ancient rights of way for ramblers) and founded the Downland Murray Trust to maintain a conservation area near her old farmhouse home at Heyshott. From her base as chairman of the Chichester Civic Society's Excavations Committee from 1964-77 and president of the Sussex Archaeological Society from 1977-80, she was involved in excavations at Bignor Roman villa, at sites in Chichester and, most famously, at Fishbourne Palace, under the direction of Professor Barry Cunliffe. The Chichester Excavations Committee was responsible for raising funds and organizing the team of more than 1,000 volunteers (including parties from the U.S.A.) who dug there over nine years. Margaret Rule, FSA, who was instrumental in discovering the site in 1960, undertook much of the donkey work and most of the site supervisors are now Fellows of this Society. The late Donald Margary bought the site in 1963, presented it to the Sussex Archaeological Trust and largely paid for building the site museum. The Sunday Times financed the design and furnishing of the museum's interior and today it is one of the few Romano-British sites to make a handsome profit from visitors. Murray's archaeological work was appreciated by scholars throughout the British Isles but she became known to a much wider audience in 1977 through the publication of Caught in the Web of Words, her biography of her self-educated philologist Scottish grandfather, James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. The dice seemed loaded against her at the outset: her father had twice submitted biographies of James Murray to Oxford University Press without success and her own manuscript, based on long years of original research on her grandfather's archives, was similarly rejected by Oxford. Happily, it was snapped up by Yale University Press and became a runaway bestseller both here and in America, with OUP forced to go cap in hand to Yale to obtain the paperback rights. Early in her long life Murray had helped bring up the children of her elder brother killed on active service, and she was much loved by her extended family, many friends and past students. She died in Sussex on 6 February 1998 and a memorial service was held in Chichester Cathedral on 15 May.