Christine Foord

Foord was born on 3 February 1922.^[1] Her parents were journalist Gerald McDermott (1879–1965), and Lucy Ogilvie McDermott (née McDermott, 1882–1945).^[2] Gerald and Lucy were cousins and had married in 1906.^[2] Foord had an older brother named Andrew Walter McDermott (1913–1959).^[3]

As Miss C.A. McDermott, Foord was elected a Member of the South London Entomological Society in 1950, with her particular field of study being listed as butterflies ["rh" or Rhopalocera].^[4]

In 1953, Foord recorded the first known occurrence on the British list of the migrant butterfly Nymphalis xanthomelas, at Shipbourne in Kent:^[5] she later gave her specimen to the Natural History Museum, London.^[6]

In the 1950s and 1960s, Foord lived at a McDermott family house that had once belonged to her great-uncle Frederick (c.1856–1924) and great-aunt Constance McDermott (c. 1855 – 1930), "The Dene" at Borough Green in Kent.^[4][7][8] In this period Foord was documented as contributing specimens and occurrence data to the South London Entomological Society, plus organising excursions.^[9] Foord presented specimens of caddisfly species Chimarra marginata, Limnephilus sparsus and Limnephilus centralis that she had collected in Scotland to the Natural History Museum in 1960.^[10][11][12]

Christine McDermott married Ronald Foord (1923–2000) in 1967.^[13] As a couple, the Foords created an archive of around 1000 black and white negatives and 35,000 colour transparencies they had taken of plants and insects, including U.K. wildflowers:^[14] they sometimes contributed their images to articles in the magazine Country Life.^[15][16]

In the early 1970s, the Foords were members of the council of the charity the Kent Trust for Nature Conservation, which later became the Kent Wildlife Trust.^[17]

Foord died in Brighton, on 5 January 2015, aged 92.^[18]