The Catholic Record Society reports, with great sadnesss, the death of one of its longest serving members, Dr Marie Rowlands, on Tuesday 22^nd July. She remained intellectually active to the end of her life, and attended the 2025 CRS Conference online, during the last week of her life.

Marie was born and brought up in Wolverhampton, and later in life, led a fierce and successful campaign to prevent the demolition (to make way for the ring road) of the historic Catholic buildings of Giffard House and the church of SS Peter and Pau,.

Her faith was the centre of her life; she was deeply involved in Catholic education and parish catechesis. Having trained and worked as a school teacher, she went on to gain higher degrees in history from the universities of Aston and Birmingham. Her professional career was fulfilled as Head of the History Department at the newly-founded Newman College of Higher Education (now Newman University). She was awarded research fellowships at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and at the University of Wolverhampton, remaining Emerita Research Fellow at Newman University until her death.

She acknowledged that her skills did not lie in the editorial and literary detail required for publication, but was a tireless and unfailingly generous supporter of others’ work, and produced a remarkable body of work, based on close forensic research in archives, particularly in the Midlands. Her focus was constantly on the Catholics of the industrial classes during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and she spent her life breaking boundaries in research into the lives and experiences of ‘ordinary Catholics’. In the words of the late John Bossy, her ‘distinguished achievement’ of research in the history of Catholicism in the Midlands has been ‘inadequately recognized’.  (John Bossy, ‘Recusant History and after’, British Catholic History, vol 32, 2015, p 273)

Marie will be received into her parish church, St Brigid’s, Northfield, Birmingham on 11^th August at 4:30, and her funeral Mass will be on Tuesday 12^th August at 10:00.