EVELYN ALMOND

1906 - 1998

Evelyn was a teacher, and in this capacity she went to Egypt where an event was to change her life: she met Col. Bill Almond who was in the Army, serving with the Manchester Regiment, and they married in 1939.

After the war they moved to St Breward where Evelyn continued her teaching work and where they were soon to meet fellow naturalists. They were both founder members of the Wildlife Trust in 1962, she contributing her expertise as a botanist and he as an ornithologist. For several years Bill was Chairman of the Trust, ably supported by his wife.

They attended Frank Turk's classes in North Cornwall in that same decade, enhancing their own wide interests in natural history. It was then that Rosaline Murphy and I came to know them both

Evelyn was first and foremost a botanist and for a short time she became the East Cornwall (Vice-county 2) Recorder for the Botanical Society of the British Isles, a post later to be filled by Barbara Garratt. She loved talking and "teaching" wildlife and shared her enthusiasm with fellow members of adult education classes, many of them taken by Bill.

In particular she inspired and helped young John Fanshawe and was very proud of the rewarding career he has since achieved in bird study and conservation. His parents became her close friends, arranging her affairs when four years ago she was no longer able to live in her beloved small house in Lostwithiel.

In her later years, and before some physical incapacity and memory loss intervened, she devoted much time and energy into helping at Churchtown Farm Field Studies Centre at Lanlivery, especially in building up and maintaining the library.

Although so many of those who knew her have moved away or died, she has still left a legacy on which others continue to build.

Stella Turk