Janet Gnosspelius (1926-2010)

Daughter of Barbara and Oscar Gnosspelius. Janet trained as an architect in the 1940s, and later developed an interest in local history and conservation. She was widely consulted as a source and authority on local history, Ruskin, Ransome, Icelandic saga-sites, Lake District artists and history, church architecture, and the work, life and ideas of her uncle, the philosopher and historian RG Collingwood. For the past 15 years she had been amassing material for WG Collingwood's biography.

The only daughter of Oscar Gnosspelius and Barbara Collingwood, Janet Gnosspelius was born in 1926. She studied architecture at Liverpool University and worked for many years as an architect. She built a reputation in church architecture and restoration, working for a time for the church architect Francis Xavier Velarde. From 1960 onward she developed a new life in local history and conservation. In later life, she began amassing material for a biography of W. G. Collingwood and her family. She died before she could complete it but donated the material to the British Idealism and Collingwood Centre. This material now forms the majority of the Collingwood Archive.