During a school assembly in 2023, two Lower Fifth pupils and academic scholars chose to highlight the life and work of Marigold Freeman-Attwood who died at home in Buckinghamshire in May 2021. We are delighted to share an extract of their presentation in Cloisters.

We have decided to focus on the incredible achievements of Marigold Freeman-Attwood who attended Downe House in the 1930s. During her amazing life, she attended Oxford University, worked at Bletchley Park, took part in cracking the enigma code, and became a published author, poet and a devoted mother. 

In February, we went on a scholars’ trip to Bletchley Park. Bletchley was the wartime home of the Government Code and Cypher School, which is now called GCHQ and which was tasked with decrypting and decoding enemy messages to provide vital intelligence that aided the Allied war effort. Today Bletchley Park is a museum, which reveals the inspiring stories of Bletchley’s workforce and their impact on World War. When we set about thinking about inspirational Downe House alumna, we really wanted to discover one of us who had actually been at the heart of cracking the enigma code and working on the Colossus machine.

Born Marigold Philips in 1923 into a well-to-do family in rural Derbyshire, Marigold received her education by default. Her elder sister June had turned up at Downe House and immediately ran away, furious at missing the hunting season! So, when it was agreed June was better occupied at home with the horses, there remained the question of what to do with the expensive uniform! So, Marigold, a dreamy misfit who hated hunting, was sent to Downe in her place.

Downe House was chosen by her parents only because the headmistress, Olive Willis, was a distant relative. However, for Marigold its progressive academic culture was perfect. She flourished under Olive Willis’s astute eye and proved not only imaginative but utterly brilliant. At Downe House, she discovered a passion for literature and learnt hundreds of pages of English poetry by heart.

“She just loved English, and she learned lots of poems off by heart. In fact, she just loved school. Her ability with words and her superb memory was vital to her work at Bletchley.” Professor Jonathan Freeman-Attwood (son)

Few girls of Marigold’s background were encouraged to try for university, but in 1941 Marigold won a place at Somerville College, Oxford, to read English. For her family this was a shocking development. Her mother, Diana, once scolded her after a disorganised shopping trip to Ashbourne: “What’s the point of having a degree if you can’t remember the fish?” But Marigold took joyfully to life at Somerville and crammed the learning of a decade into her two wartime years. 

After Oxford, in 1943 and in the midst of WW2, Marigold was recruited into the WRENS, and she was sent to Bletchley Park. Her mother would boast that her daughter was in something high up at the Admiralty, but neither she nor anyone knew what Marigold was really doing.

Fifty years later, it was revealed she had worked on Colossus, the computer that finally broke into the German high command’s secret messaging. Many people at Bletchley were recruited with the use of Crosswords that were put in Newspapers. Each crossword had a contact number that was to be used by those who could solve the puzzle. When we asked Marigold’s son if this was how she was recruited, he said that when asked about it during her interview, Marigold replied saying she was, “Hopeless.”  But evidently, she wasn’t, and her incredible intellect played a vital role in the war effort. 

Marigold worked at Bletchley Park between August 1943 to May 1945. She began her training in Eastcote, London. This was reportedly the place where they had to be conditioned mentally for the kind of work and the burden of the responsibility they would have to undertake as a Wren. Marigold’s 8-hour shift consisted of translating rolls of punch tapes from Morse Code into text which very rarely made sense. 

Marigold said that when she worked at Bletchley the Wrens “had a lot of fun” however they were “very much segregated” as she did not remember going into the mansion or any other huts at any point she worked there. Due to all this secrecy, no one was able to truly trust each other which caused very few real friendships to be made. Furthermore, all workers were banned from telling their families about their work when they visited home.  

When we asked her son Professor Freeman-Attwood about the possible suspicion surrounding his mother, he told us that even though “she wasn’t good at lying, she was legendary at changing a story to go down another route if she didn’t fancy it; her command of the English language was virtuosic in the right contexts allowing her to easily put people off the scent.”

We also asked Professor Freeman-Attwood when he first knew of his mother's work at Bletchley. He was the youngest of 4 children and said that he thinks that he was the last to know.  At the end of the war, they had to swear not to tell anyone, and it was not before 2000 that they were able to share what they had done. Even after this Marigold was hesitant. Typical of her generation, she made light of her part in winning the war.

Unfortunately, the war was also an immensely tragic event for Marigold, as it was a continuum of a sad period in which her father died of cancer, her brother was killed in a tank exercise in Dorset and then her close friend, Billy Astell, was the first to die in the Dambuster Raid. 

There were doubtless many other acquaintances she knew would never return. However, like millions of others, Marigold had to persevere and she always demonstrated resilience. Doing such top secret work, however, left a heavy burden on Marigold and she said after the war, all she craved was 'normality’.

She summed this up as wanting to have: "In this order, a husband, a baby, a house and a car. I had no ambitions and I think that was very common." Though Marigold craved what she called 'normality', she nevertheless was extraordinarily talented. While at Bletchley, she had won the navy’s poetry competition and she continued to write poetry, privately, until her last years. She also wrote a History Of Leap Castle.  She taught briefly, but in 1946 she abandoned professional life altogether for marriage to a regular soldier, David Wedderburn with whom she has three children. After David died in action in 1960, she married Warren Freeman-Attwood, also a soldier, and had Jonathan, to whom we are so grateful for helping us with our assembly.

​What struck us most about Marigold is her immense talent but her incredible modesty. Legendary among friends for her letters, her sparkling and compassionate conversation, and her witty occasional poems, Marigold could have been famous for her literary talent. She would regularly match any mood or moment with lines plucked from memory.

However, she didn’t seek fame or fortune or individual glory. Rather, Marigold sought to make a difference to others and to use her incredible talents to help others, whether that was at Bletchley Park, or as a mother.

Today we remember Marigold as the most incredible woman who embodies so much of the Downe House DNA but in a quiet, modest way.

"To each of us, from all generations, she was a different, unique Marigold, created through her sensitivity to every individual she loved or befriended. It didn’t matter who we were, she stood alongside us as we were, and not according to some fixed idea. We all have memories of her piercing insight, encouragement, her twinkly mischief and sage advice, perfectly attuned to us. Many have said, even and perhaps especially in her last years, that she changed the course of our lives." Sarah Wedderburn (daughter) 

An extract from Sarah Wedderburn’s tribute to her mother at Marigold’s funeral in 2021. Sarah herself is a Downe House alumna, attending from 1965 to 1967.

Remember Me

Remember me now all is past

That was so sweet but could not last,

We must accept what has to be

But, dearest love, remember me.

Remember me when Spring is here

And blossom falls in rivers clear

And if a garden you should see

Where once we walked, remember me.

Remember me if you should lie

And watch a cloudless summer sky

Fade into evening, silently,

And when night falls, remember me.

Remember me when fields are bare

And Autumn’s frosts are in the air,

When first the leaves drift from the tree

Like falling tears, remember me.

WRITTEN BY MARIGOLD IN 1942

Our sincere thanks to Sarah, Jonathan, Robin and all of Marigold’s family for sharing so much of her life with us.