Eulogy for Esther

In Honour of My Grandmother

In my eyes, my English grandmother Esther’s life was a celebration of education, elegance & environmentalism. She also showed great strength and a spirit of service.

Esther Joy Archer was born on 24 May 1926 in Kensington, where she lived at 65 Onslow Gardens, to British diplomat Norman Archer and his wife The Honourable Ruth Evelyn Pease, daughter of Herbert Pike Pease, 1st Baron Daryngton and Alice Mortimer Luckock.

The National Portrait Gallery in London has portraits of her mother and grandmother, which you can purchase as prints or greetings cards from their website.

She served in the British Women's Royal Naval Service (known as ‘the Wrens’).

Esther Archer met my grandfather, the Irish educationalist Robert Blackburn, at Trinity College Dublin, where she was studying Botany and Biology under Professor David Webb and he was reading History with gold medal and captained the rugby XV.

They were both very involved in The United Nations Association, first in Dublin and later in London with David (later Lord) and Professor Dickie Ennals, Caroline Haviland and Margaret Quass OBE, who would become my mother’s Godmother.

Legend has it that my grandfather smuggled his future wife into an all-male meeting in Dublin in disguise, which must have been rather hard given how elegant she was.

A University contemporary and friend Robin Boyd later remarked:

“For me she always embodied the positive, cheerful side of life.”

My grandparents were engaged in 1951.

They married on 1 April 1952 in Wadhurst, Sussex.

Together, they had two daughters:

• Kari Ruth Blackburn, b. 30 Mar 1954, d. 27 June 2007

• Lucy Patricia Blackburn, b. 24 Feb 1956

  

  

  

  Esther taught at a Girls' Convent School in Somerset, where she showed her pupils how to use a telescope.

  

  She later taught Biology at The Atlantic College, where my mother remembers fondly breeding mice. Esther wrote the booklet The History of St Donat's Castle.

  My grandfather was Deputy Headmaster & Director of Studies. In 1968, he was appointed International Secretary of the United World College international office, working with Lord Mountbatten of Burma, President of the organization.

Throughout her life, my grandmother Esther had an abiding love of Norway, especially Sand in Rogaland, where her parents lived. She spoke fluent Norwegian and tagged salmon in a long term study of the Sand River to track where they bred.

Esther was a member of The Dulwich Society’s Tree Committee to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.

After she died on 30 September 1977, two Norway maples were planted in her memory by the Society and her family in Grove Meadow (south of Lovers Walk) in March 1978.

Thank you to genealogist Richard Swetenham for informing me that my grandmother was the tenth cousin once removed of Diana, Princess of Wales.