Rescue is this week reeling with shock and sadness at the news of the sudden death of Dr Kate Fielden on the 21st July following a very short illness. Kate has been a hugely important member of Rescue Council since 2006, and served as Vice-Chair between 2016 and 2021. She was committed and loyal, rarely missing a meeting and always a contributor to our consultation submissions and responses to government, no matter how busy she was with other matters. She also always led on the quality assurance of Rescue’s work, forever known to check its messaging, language and tone before submission.
Those ‘other matters’ were of course Stonehenge to which she dedicated much of her life. She served as lead spokesperson and as secretary for the Stonehenge Alliance as well as being the Rescue representative. Kate spent most of the last two decades campaigning for appropriate solutions to the A303 and Stonehenge dilemma. We have shared with her the lows and highs of government decisions and high court judgments. We were always impressed by how she maintained her determination to defend Stonehenge against such severe and irreparable damage, a cause she was working for up to the last, emailing us from her hospital bed even on the day she died. She was very distressed on the occasions when the Stonehenge campaign turned archaeologist against archaeologist and firmly believed that one could oppose the scheme but support the archaeologists undertaking the necessary investigations.
A distinctively English figure – clad in a long skirt and comfortable cardigan, and usually attending meetings carrying a traditional wicker basket containing her papers – her outward gentility disguised a steely and resolute core, unconcerned in the face of some apparently overwhelming resources stacked against the causes she championed. Rescue colleagues have been remembering her as ‘a great and committed campaigner’, ‘the centre of gravity for Rescue Council’, ‘kind and principled’, ‘tenacious’, ‘measured’, ‘articulate’. We cannot express the level of our devastation at her loss and the responsibility we have to attempt to preserve her legacy, but we give grateful thanks for the time she shared with us and the contribution she made to serve and protect the heritage sites and issues she held most dear.
Our thoughts are with her family, many friends and archaeologists from across the world all of whom will be poorer for her loss.
