Fflorens Roch
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12 February 1879
Mrs Walter Roch
Fflorens Roch | |
|---|---|
| Born | Hon. Fflorens Mary Ursula Herbert 12 February 1879 Westminster, London |
| Died | 18 March 1969 (aged 90) Pontypool, Wales |
| Other names | Seren Gwent[1] Mrs Walter Roch |
| Education | University of Cambridge |
| Spouse | Walter Francis Roch m. 1911 |
| Parent(s) | Sir Ivor John Caradoc Herbert, 1st Baron Treowen and Albertina Agnes Mary Denison |
| Family | Benjamin Hall, 1st Baron Llanover, grandfather Augusta Hall, Baroness Llanover,[2] grandmother Peter FitzHerbert, descendent |
The Hon. Fflorens Roch (12 Feb 1879 -18 March 1969) was an author and chief commissioner for Girl Guides in Wales.[3] In 1916 she donated the Llanover Manuscripts (seventy-seven volumes of notes, transcripts and compositions by Iolo Morganwg) to the National Library of Wales.[4] She was a recipient of the Silver Fish Award, the Girl Guide Association's highest adult honour, in 1922.[5]
Catholic faith
Born the Hon. Fflorens Mary Ursula Herbert, she was the daughter of Sir Ivor John Caradoc Herbert, 1st Baron Treowen (1851–1933) and Hon. Albertina Agnes Mary Denison (1854–1929). She had one brother, Hon. Elydir John Bernard Herbert, who was killed in World War I,[6] at which point she inherited the family fortune. She was a descendent of Peter FitzHerbert (d. 1235), one of the counsellor's named in the Magna Carta.[7] She was a student at Cambridge University.[8] The family estate was Llanarth Court, Monmouthshire.
She married Walter Roch (1880–1965), the MP for Pembrokeshire on 20 April 1911.[9] At that year's annual general meeting of the Liberal Social Council in Newport,[10] she was presented with a bookcase containing a "valuable collection of Welsh literature" as a wedding gift.
She "lived very little with her husband and had nothing in common with him."[11] She developed a "close and long-lasting relationship"[12] with Scottish author and art theorist Clementina Anstruther-Thomson (1857–1921). The two were "rarely apart".[13]
Roch, like her parents, was a committed Catholic.[14] In 1948, she donated the main house of Llanover Court to the Catholic Church, and moved into a small home on the estate.[15] She also paid for the building of a Catholic church, Our Lady of Peace, in Newbridge, Caerphilly,[16] published several pamphlets and books through the Catholic Truth Society including about the Catholic faith in Girl Guiding.[17]
Girl Guides
During World War I, Roch and Anstruther-Thomson organised Girl Guides in London, and gave joint classes in drill and public speaking at the first Girl Guide Training School.[18] She also held other roles within Girl Guiding over the years:
