We are delighted to be able to announce that our former President Dr Jean Wilson has been awarded the MBE in the Birthday Honours List. Jean says:

‘I am proud that our small heritage conservation society has been thus
honoured, recognising the Church Monuments Society for the dedication of
its members to the study and preservation of funerary monuments.

‘That we do not have much sculpture, or many great sculptors, in Britain
is a common misapprehension. We have a great deal, and a great many, and
are privileged to have much of it preserved in the setting for which it
was designed. This setting is our churches. Almost all surviving
sculpture from before the Restoration, the bulk of sculpture from the
long eighteenth century, and a great deal of nineteenth and even
twentieth-century sculpture is preserved in our churches, freely
available.

‘It is the aim of the CMS to widen the appreciation, preservation and
study of this hugely important national cultural resource.  In this we
have to contend with various difficulties, including the C of E and its
clergy’s ignorance of heritage, Natural England with its prioritising of
bats over congregations and culture, and criminals who desecrate and rob
our churches.

‘This honour is doubly welcome as my distinguished predecessor, Sally
Badham, F.S.A., was similarly recognised at the end of her tenure as
President of the CMS, and I hope that this award will further raise the
profile of the Society and of the national cultural heritage to which it
is dedicated.’

Our warmest congratulations to Dr Wilson. The photos below show her (somewhere) at a recent Buckingham Palace garden party, and speaking to members at last year’s AGM.

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