Gabrielle Margaret Jennings

Gabrielle Margaret Lambrick MA, FRHist Soc (23 August 1913 – 14 August 1968) was a British senior civil servant, educator and historian. After a distinguished career in the civil service during World War II she married and became a historian on medieval Abingdon in Oxfordshire and its environs. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1967.

Early life She was born in Wandsworth in London in 1913, the daughter of Isabel Evelyn née Henderson and Herbert Henry Jennings, a hospital administrator and art collector. while she taught history and current affairs at Brighton Girls. Here she was also the school librarian and helped with sporting, dramatic and musical events. Her plans to teach music at the school were halted by the outbreak of World War II when the school was evacuated. The couple moved to Boars Hill near Abingdon in Oxfordshire where they had two sons: Charles Trevor Lambrick (born 1949), a solicitor; and George Hugh Lambrick (born 1952), an archaeologist.

From about 1959 Gabrielle Lambrick began her own research into the history of Abingdon which included writing a well-received guidebook to St. Peter’s church in Wootton (1964). At this time she discovered that the two surviving cartularies of Abingdon Abbey, one of the leading Benedictine monasteries of medieval England, were as yet unpublished. She devoted the rest of her life to this project with the support of Helen Cam and other eminent historians of medieval England including Vivian Hunter Galbraith and William Abel Pantin. By the time of her death in 1968 these remained unpublished until they were picked up in 1982 by Cecil Slade, a medieval historian and the head of archaeology at the University of Reading who completed her work leading to their publication by the Oxford Historical Society in 1990 and 1992.

Selected publications Books Lambrick, Gabrielle Margaret. The Church of Saint Peter, Wootton, Berkshire. Illustrated guide, Abingdon : Abbey Press, 1964 Lambrick, Gabrielle Margaret. Business Affairs at Abingdon Abbey in Mediaeval Times, Abingdon, (Berks.) : Friends of Abingdon, 1966 Lambrick, Gabrielle and Slade, C. F. (eds) Two cartularies of Abingdon Abbey Vol. I, [Oxford] : Oxford Historical Society. 1990 Lambrick, Gabrielle and Slade, C. F. (eds) Two cartularies of Abingdon Abbey Vol. II, [Oxford] : Oxford Historical Society. 1992

Articles Lambrick, Gabrielle. Abingdon and the Riots of 1327, Oxoniensia, Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society, Vol. 29-30, (1964-1965) Lambrick, Gabrielle. Abingdon Abbey Administration, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 1966 Lambrick, Gabrielle. The Impeachment of the Abbot of Abingdon in 1368, The English Historical Review, Volume LXXXII, Issue CCCXXIII, April 1967, Pages 250–276