Looking back: Peterborough’s pioneering sportswoman

This week’s featured plaque is located on the Cobden Avenue side of the Lincoln Gate scheme on Lincoln Road (formerly the site of the County Girls School).

Marjorie Pollard, born on August 3, 1899 in Chester Street, Rugby, Warwickshire, was the youngest of three children to James Rowland Pollard, a railway engine driver, and his wife, Anne ElizabethMewys.

She was educated at the County Grammar School for Girls. She played hockey for Peterborough and Northamptonshire and later became one of England’s finest hockey players from 1921 to 1937.

She was a prolific goal scorer, famously scoring 13 goals in England’s 20-0 win over Wales in 1926 and all the goals in the 8-0 defeat of Germany.

She later became acting president of the All-England Women’s Hockey Association and, in 1926, was a founding member of the England Women’s Cricket Association.

From 1946 to 1970 she edited both Hockey Field, and also Women’s Cricket.

In addition, she was employed by leading national newspapers such as The Times, The Guardian and the Morning Press.

Not content with just print journalism she was the first female BBC radio commentator and sports film maker and also founded her own publishing house.

For much of her life she lived in Bampton, Oxfordshire where, according to the Bampton Community archive, she lived at the Deanery with her friend Miss Moreton.

Marjorie had a flock of Jacobs sheep which used to spend the winter with her at the Deanery and the summer at Burford Wild Life Park.

According to the Archive Marjorie: “was an important supportive part of village life. She had threatened to drive the sewage cart to the Houses of Parliament in London to protest about the fact that Bampton did not have main drainage, as late as the mid-fifties”.

In 1965 Marjorie was awarded an OBE for services to sport.

Shortly before her death Marjorie left her hockey collection to The Hockey Museum.

The museum’s website reports that: “this included dozens of reels of film with some of the cans still bearing postage stamps from where they had been sent off to clubs and schools.

“These films were potentially fragile so it wasn’t until 2016, when The Hockey Museum was awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to digitise the films, that we have been able to view them. Amongst the reels were two marked “Coronation 1953”. When the films were digitised we found they were of the Coronation preparations and celebrations in the village of Bampton in Oxfordshire where Marjorie lived”.

A valuable historical record indeed.

Marjorie died in Bampton, in 1982.

This plaque is one of a series of 15 blue plaques recently installed in central Peterborough by Peterborough Civic Society.

The new series of plaques augments the 20 existing plaques in the city centre.

Further details about all of them can be found in the accompanying 28-page booklet which can be ordered on the society’s website at a price of £2 per copy (to cover postage and packing).  

Once the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions are relaxed, copies of the booklet will be available to collect free of charge at the Town Hall and other outlets.

A download of the booklet is available on the society’s website. The plaques project has been supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Peterborough City Council.