Louisa Collings

Louisa Elizabeth Collings (née Lukis; 4 June 1818 or 1828 – 24 March 1887) was an amateur lichenologist and natural history collector from the Channel Islands. She is the ancestor of all the subsequent Seigneurs of Sark through her children with husband William Thomas Collings.

Early life

Collings was born either on 4 June 1818 to Elizabeth (née Collings) and Frederick Lukis, the eldest of three daughters. Due to the early 19th-century views on female education, Collings and her sisters probably did not receive any formal schooling. Her interest in lichens was most likely due to the influence of her father, from whom she probably inherited many local specimens.

Personal life

Louisa Lukis married her cousin, clergyman William Thomas Collings, on 15 June 1847. The ceremony was conducted by her brother, Rev. William Collings Lukis, at St Saviour's Church. The couple had four daughters and two sons, William Frederick (1852–1927) and Henry de Vic (1855–1872). Her mother-in-law Marie Collings had bought the Seigneurship of Sark in 1852, and on her death in 1853, Louisa Collings' husband became Seigneur of Sark. She was widowed in 1882, at which point the fief of Sark passed to her son William Frederick Collings. The current Christopher Beaumont, 23rd Seigneur of Sark is Collings' direct descendant.

In 1887 Collings decided to pay a visit to her eldest daughter, Mary Edmeades, who lay ill in Folkestone. She died there on 24 March, shortly after her daughter, having suffered from bronchitis for three days. She outlived all her children except for the Seigneur; her other daughters died respectively in 1851, 1859 and 1871.