The Women of Medmenham: Lady Charlotte Bonham-Carter

Personal Life

Charlotte Bonham-Carter (née Ogilvy) was born in 1893 to Colonel William Ogilvy and his wife Lucy Wickham. She was educated at Miss Wolff’s School in Eastbourne and subsequently in Dresden. In 1927 she married Sir Edgar Bonham-Carter, a barrister and colonial administrator in Sudan and Iraq, thereby becoming Lady Bonham-Carter. Throughout her life, she remained dedicated to public service.

War Service

Bonham-Carter played an active role during both world wars. During the First World War, she served as a typist in the Foreign Office before being seconded to work in military intelligence under Major Ian Pepler in MI5. Notably, in this role she was involved in tracking Lenin’s whereabouts on the eve of the Russian Revolution. In 1919, she was asked by Major Pepler to be a part of the British Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, which she accepted. 

In the 1930s, Bonham-Carter trained as a pilot, a skill which would have considerable relevance to her work during the Second World War. On the outbreak of the war, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).  She was commissioned to work in the Photographic Interpretation Unit at RAF Medmenham in 1941, where she was responsible for analysing aerial photographs of wartime Europe. She excelled in this role and was later made an officer in the RAF’s Special Duties Service, which provided support to the resistance movement in Axis-controlled territories. 

A letter from the Air Ministry to Bonham-Carter from July 1941 extolled the ‘splendid work [she is] doing for the RAF’. The writer hoped ‘you find it interesting, but I feel sure you would get the maximum amount of interest out of anything you did.’ In 1944, she was temporarily transferred to the Damage Section (which assessed the damage done by Allied bombing raids) due to her ‘excellent background and special knowledge of industrial targets.’ Her transfer note thanks her for the ‘valuable work [she has] done in this Section, and also the great personal effort made, which has been inspiring to the other Officers in Room 809.’

With her morale-boosting antics (which included carrying sandwiches with her everywhere she went, loaning a grand piano for a musical concert and a relaxed attitude to gas practice exercises) Bonham-Carter was a colourful presence at Medmenham. After the war, she continued to serve as a civil servant, working in the library of the Foreign Office.

After the War

Bonham-Carter’s dedication to service ranged beyond her war efforts. She was an active community member who was dedicated to public service and was a great admirer of the arts. In 1926, she became a founding director of the Ballet Rambert (later known as the Rambert Dance Company), spending many years on the board of trustees. After inheriting the estate of Binsted Wyck in Hampshire from her mother in 1947, she ‘became absorbed in the life of the district’.

She became a Hampshire county councillor, chairman of the planning committee, a member of the Paddington Borough Council, and also presided over the Women’s Advisory Housing Council. She was a founder of the Redgrave Theatre in Farnham, Chairman of Governors at Eggars Grammar School and a Governor of Amery Hill Secondary School, both in Alton. Upon her death in 1989, a local Hampshire newspaper hailed her as ‘a remarkable patron of the arts, a tireless supporter of good causes and a perennial presence at cultural gatherings’. 

Charlotte Bonham-Carter’s legacy endures through her pivotal role as a photographic interpreter at RAF Medmenham during the war, but also more broadly through her personal connections with local community members and organisations.

Nuzhat Biswas, NCAP Digital Imaging Technician

Find out more about the images analysed at RAF Medmenham, and some of the women who worked there:

ACIU  Aerial photography and WWII  Women of Medmenham