Rotha Mary Clay (17 September 1878 – 1 March 1961) was a British self-taught historian and social worker.

Life

Clay was born in

Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the London Borough of Barnet, northwest London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient Manorialism, manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has ...

in 1878 where her father was a minister. In time the family moved to Bristol where her father led the Bristol church of St Michael on the Mount Without. Her paternal grandparents were friends with

John Constable John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romanticism, Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedha ...

. Her parents were the diarist Jessy (born Allan) and the amateur painter John Harden Clay. Clay would visit the Lake District and the

River Rothay The Rothay is a spate river of the Lake District in north-west England. Its name comes from Old Norse and translates literally as ''the red one''. This has come to mean ''trout river''. It rises close to Rough Crag above Dunmail Raise at a p ...

near Ambleside after which she had been named. At the end of 1895 she started the only known formal education when she began a year of study at

Queen's College, London Queen's College is a Private schools in the United Kingdom, private day school for girls aged 11–18 with an adjoining prep school for girls aged 4–11 located in the City of Westminster, London. It was founded in 1848 by theologian and social ...

. She performed well, but she did not move on to a formal university course, but she did begin an interest in being a scholar. By the twentieth century she was exploiting

Bristol University The University of Bristol is a public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Bristol, which had ...

's Library to study the history of

medieval hospital The history of hospitals began in antiquity with hospitals in Greece, the Roman Empire and on the Indian subcontinent as well, starting with precursors in the Asclepeion, Asclepian temples in ancient Greece and then the Medicine in ancient Rome#Hos ...

s in England. Her work attracted the interest of the editor of

The Antiquary ''The Antiquary'' (1816), the third of the Waverley novels by Walter Scott, centres on the character of an antiquary: an amateur historian, archaeologist and collector of items of dubious antiquity. He is the eponymous character and for all prac ...

John Charles Cox John Charles Cox (1843 – 23 February 1919; published under the name J. Charles Cox) was an English cleric, activist and local historian. Life He was born in Parwich, Derbyshire, the son of Edward Cox, vicar of Luccombe, Somerset, and was educa ...

was a cleric and local historian and he managed '' The Antiquaries' Books'' for

Methuen & Co Methuen Publishing Ltd (; also known as Methuen Books) is an English publishing house. It was founded in 1889 by Sir Algernon Methuen (1856–1924) and began publishing in London in 1892. Initially, Methuen mainly published non-fiction acade ...

. By 1909 she had completed ''The Medieval Hospitals of England'' and five years later ''The Hermits and Anchorites of England''. The latter is still considered a standard work more 100 years after it was published. It is thorough and meticulous, and it includes a table of all the known cells. In 1914 she was involved with social work, first at Barton Hill and then in 1918 in

Shirehampton Shirehampton is a district of Bristol in England, near Avonmouth, at the northwestern edge of the city. It originated as a separate village, retains a High Street with a parish church and shops, and is still thought of as a village by many of ...

. Clay had "private means" that enabled her to fund her works. She bought Ilex Cottage in the High Street of Shirehampton where she lived with Rosa Higgs. In 1941 she published her study of the life of the Swiss landscape artist

Samuel Hieronymus Grimm Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (18 January 1733 – 14 April 1794)''The Gentleman's Magazine'', 1794, p399 was an 18th-century Swiss landscape artist who worked in oils (until 1764), watercolours, and pen and ink media. Grimm specialised in documenti ...

. Clay died in

. She left her estate to be divided with a specific bequest for Rosa Higgs.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clay, Rotha 1878 births 1961 deaths People from Hendon British social workers