Margaret (Dame Luarentia) Maclachlan 1866-1953 
Born 11th January,1866, Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland.
Died 23rd August 1953, Stanbroke Abbey, Worcestershire, England.
Daughter of Henry Maclachlan 1828-1890 and Mary McAleese 1826-1900. 
She had three brothers (John, James, and ?) and three sisters (Helena, Mary, & ?).


Dame Luarentia Maclachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook 
On whose correspondence with George Bernard Shaw the successful 
West End Play 'The Best of Friends' with John Geilgud was based.

There is a book largely about her life: 
"In A Great Tradition" Tribute to Dame Laurentia Mclachlan,
Abbess of Stanbrook, by the Benedictines of Stanbrook.

First published in 1956. 
Made and printed in Great 
Britain by William Clowes and Sons, Ltd., London and Beccles. 
Published by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd., Albemarle Street, London.

From the book's cover flap:

The Evening Standard. 'The Abbess was one of the most charming women of
 her time andours. As a Benedictine nun she rarely and briefly ventured
 out into the world. Conversations were conducted through and iron 
grill. Yet she became an eminent scholar, an authority in Gregorian 
chant and medieval documents. She made close almost passionate- 
friendships with distinguished figures in the world outside her 
convent.'

To those who think of monastic life only in terms of high walls and 
double grilles, the life, influence, and friendships of Dame Laurentia 
McLachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook, may seem something of an enigma. 
Although at her death in 1953 seventy of he eighty seven years had been
 spent within the strictly enclosed convent in Worcestershire, she was 
a person 'without frontiers', and in Bernard Shaw's words 'an enclosed
 nun with an unenclosed mind'. 'Her friends' it was written of her, 
'were princes of the church and dignitaries of the Church of England; 
scholars ardently catholic and openly agnostic, men a women devoted to 
the drama and the stage, poets, parents, craftsmen, and humble 
labourers; they came in richly varied and diverting procession.' Out of 
a dedicated life she gave of herself to the many who needed her help 
and inspiration.

She was a pioneer in the restoration of the Gregorian chant in England 
and a leading authority on music and medieval manuscripts, but it is her
 capacity for friendship that most astonishes. This is most strikingly 
show in the case of Sir Sidney Cockerell and George Bernard Shaw, many 
of whose letters are now published for the first time. Rarely has 
friendship and mutual respect been hammered out through such a contest 
of letters and conflict of views as that between Dame Laurentia and 
Bernard Shaw, who wrote on his last birthday 'the thought of Stanbrook 
is a delight to me. It is one of my holy places'.

This book is mainly about the life of one nun, but Part 1 gives a brief
 historical background with an account of some of her predecessors, the
 years in France, the tribulations during the French Revolution and the
 flight of the Benedictine nuns back to England. Part II describes the 
English Benedictine tradition within which Dame Laurentia followed her vocation.

As the account of her arrival at Stanbrook as a tearful schoolgirl 
shows, her decision to dedicate her life had not been an easy one. The 
story of how fully and in what unexpected ways she fulfilled her 
'vocation and its irresistible force' will be of absorbing interest to 
readers whatever their faith and an inspiration to many.

Stanbrook Abbey
http://www.stanbrookabbey.org.uk
The enclosed nun with the unenclosed mind
b. Lanarkshire, Scotland.
d. Worcester, England.
Among the five figures chosen to represent 1000 years of "the inspired 
Christian life" in Worcester Cathedral's Window of the Millennium is 
that of Dame Laurentia McLachlan, abbess of Stanbrook 1931-53. Etched 
in plain glass, the work defines her habited form clearly, though her
 grey-green eyes are less well served by the medium. Dame Laurentia's 
companions in the window include a Saxon saint (Wulstan), a medieval 
plough-man (Piers), a seventeenth century Quaker (Richard Baxter), and 
an army chaplain from the First World War (Studdert Kennedy) - a range 
which reflects her wide circle of friends in life and for which she is,
 perhaps, best known. George Bernard Shaw described her as "an enclosed 
nun with an unenclosed mind". Her friendships with Shaw and Sydney 
Cockerell have become known world-wide through Dame Felicitas Corrigan's
 tribute, In a Great Tradition (1956), and its derivatives for stage a
nd screen, notably, Hugh Whitemore's The Best of Friends, issued also
 in paperback. That such friendships should flourish in what is often 
perceived as the "narrow" world of the cloister where Dame Laurentia 
spent seventy of her eighty-seven years, never ceases to amaze in some 
quarters, yet friendship is very much in the monastic tradition, as 
proved by St Aelred of Rievaulx's twelfth-century treatise On Spiritual
 Friendship; the strong Stanbrook tradition is an inheritance which has 
come down to us from St Thomas More, great-great-grandfather of the 
foundress, Dame Gertrude More.

The Worcester window also portrays two of Dame Laurentia's other spheres
 of influence: scholarship and music. Medieval history was an early 
interest where she focused particularly on Worcester subjects, including
 St Wulstan (1008-1095) - now her opposite light in the window! The 
thirteenth-century Worcester Antiphoner, a treasure lent to Stanbrook by
 her close friend Canon Wilson, Librarian of Worcester Cathedral, was 
her special joy. It became a prime source for the study of Gregorian 
chant; Dame Laurentia was the pioneer of its revival in England. In 1934
 her labours in this field were recognised when Pope Pius XI bestowed on
 her the "bene merenti" medal for her contribution to church music.

She served the wider Benedictine family as a member of the commission 
set up in 1931 to modernise the constitutions governing monastic life 
for women in England, while at Stanbrook she put her "unenclosed mind" 
to the service of the community in a host of ways. Her plans for a new 
outdoor recreation area provide an amusing example. She wrote to a friend:

"You may like to see the loggia we have just built... The view looks 
South and is a delight to all - a godsend this wet summer. The idea 
came to me one day as I walked down and confronted an elderly piano set
 against an outside wall. I had a sudden wish to walk through the piano!
 The next step was, 'Why not?'"

In 1931 Dame Laurentia was elected abbess of Stanbrook, an office she 
filled until her death in 1953 and to which she brought considerable 
skills of leadership, understanding and discretion. Never strong 
physically, Abbess Laurentia became increasingly frail in later years. 
Some hold it was this very frailty which gave her such a deep human 
sympathy. Her spirituality was simple and straightforward, anchored by 
the twin Benedictine commands to, "Prefer nothing to Christ" (RB 72:11)
 and "Put nothing before the Work of God" (RB 43:3). She would have 
endorsed the dictum of her contemporary and fellow Gallo-Celt, Dom 
Columba Marmion, that one should "look at God far more than at 
oneself...."

What, then, would be her reaction to being gazed at in a Worcester 
Cathedral window (or even a web-site?) by thousands of visitors? Seventy
years of detachment would, perhaps, allow her to accept the honour 
graciously, not for herself but as a tribute to the life she so 
treasured and for the glory of the God she so loved. For - we can 
almost hear her add with all the wit if her patron, St Laurence - a 
window is nothing without the Light!

Dame Laurentia is to be included in the New DNB, due for publication in 2004.