Betty Willsher

Elizabeth Cameron Willsher MBE (12 December 1915 – 25 February 2012) was an early years child psychologist and educationalist, lecturer, children's author, historian, preservationist and noted Scottish Gravestones researcher, recorder, authority and writer.

Early life

Elizabeth Cameron Anderson, known throughout her life as Betty, was born in the village of Coundon in County Durham, England, on 12 December 1915 to Scottish parents William Grieg Anderson, a general practitioner, and his wife Mary Gordon Adam.

She studied at the University of St Andrews from 1933 to 1936 where she graduated with a degree in psychology and philosophy, before going on to complete a one-year certificate in nursery education at the Rachel McMillan Nursery Training College in Deptford. Her first teaching post was at a nursery in London's East End dockyards.

In retirement Willsher embraced the social scene in St Andrews, joining various local clubs and became an active conservation campaigner, fighting to protect the built heritage of the town, spearheading the campaign for the Crawford Arts Centre and as a stalwart of the local preservation trust. This keen interest in conservation would also be expressed nationally as she and her friend Bunty Mould travelled across Scotland recording, photographing and interpreting historic graveyards and the unique memorials within.

Beginning in 1978, she wrote, co-authored and edited a series of books on Scotland's graveyards, drawing considerable attention to these much-neglected historic sites. She took special interest in trades symbols and Green Men. Probably her most famous work, Understanding Scottish Graveyards, ran to 20 editions by 2006.

Willsher curated exhibitions of her photographs and would visit heritage groups and societies across the country and overseas to share her accumulated knowledge of these monuments and sites. In June 1993 she delivered a lecture on Scotland's graveyards to the 16th Annual Conference of the Association for Gravestone Studies at Connecticut College in New London.

Interviewing Willsher about her life and works for The Scotsman in 1996, following the recent publication of Scottish Epitaphs and Images from Scottish Graveyards, journalist Judith Woods was taken by the "evangelical enthusiasm for the emblems of death and the accompanying words which cast an epigrammatic light on mortality as it was perceived in centuries past" that infused Willsher's writing on graveyards.

Willsher told the journalist that her passion for the subject came "from a passion for archaeology rather than any religious perspective" adding: "I was fascinated by the whole subject, I found the 17th and 18th-century carved stones in Scotland were better than any other country I have visited. They are carved on both sides, they are very ornate and they have a wider range of emblems. There isn't the same variation in England."

Her collected papers, covering the period 1970–1999, are held at Historic Environment Scotland Archives in Edinburgh. The archive includes photographs and manuscripts relating to her survey work of graveyards across Scotland and a collection of her own and others’ books on graves and graveyards.