The Women of Medmenham: Dorothy Garrod

Dorothy Garrod (1892-1968) pursued a successful academic career at a time when the limitations placed on women often hindered and overshadowed their important work. As one of the many women photographic interpreters at RAF Medmenham, she played a key role in photo intelligence and retains a strong legacy at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities as well as the National Collection of Aerial Photography.

Early Career

Dorothy Garrod began attending Newnham College at Cambridge in 1913. Newnham was one of only two Cambridge colleges to accept women at the time, although it would not attain full status as a Cambridge college until 1948. Despite women not being allowed to receive degrees until 1948, Garrod pursued her education and read ancient and classical history. When her interests developed towards anthropology and archaeology, Garrod undertook a diploma in anthropology from Oxford University in 1921.

Garrod’s first independent excavation was in Gibraltar between 1925-1926. She continued to defy barriers to her career in the predominately male pursuit of archaeology and was part of an uncharacteristically female team in 1929 at Mount Carmel, Palestine. Garrod received criticism there for employing local women to dig the site because she believed they worked harder than men. Her discoveries at Mount Carmel were her most ground-breaking work, bringing to light the first evidence of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cultures in the region. Returning to Cambridge to publicise her findings in 1934, Garrod’s work was published in The Stone Age of Mount Carmel (1937-39).

Time at Medmenham

Garrod’s career at Cambridge was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, as there were suddenly no students to teach. However, in 1942 her Cambridge colleague Hugh Hamshaw Thomas approached her with an opportunity to keep busy and help the war effort as part of the team at RAF Medmenham.

Upon trying to enrol into the Air Intelligence branch of the RAF, Garrod was initially refused entry on the grounds of her age. With the support of her Cambridge colleagues, and an uncovered rule which exempted Garrod from the age clause, Garrod’s enrolment was accepted and she reported for duty at RAF Medmenham on 5 May 1942, her fiftieth birthday.

She was based in the photographic interpretation unit at RAF Medmenham in F Section and became Section Officer. F Section had responsibility for the third-phase interpretation of enemy transport and communications, and included specialists on railways, waterways and roads. They were charged with assessing how transport infrastructure had been affected by Allied attacks and, when it had been satisfactorily repaired, was ready to be attacked again.

This was not Garrod’s first military position. From 1916-1919, Garrod had worked with the Catholic Women’s League in northern France and the Rhineland, nursing wounded soldiers and refugees. Glyn Daniel – a colleague at both Cambridge and Medmenham – described Garrod as easy to get on with, ‘a generous, lovable, outgoing person’ and it seems she had a fond relationship with many at Medmenham. Fellow photographic interpreter Ann McKnight-Kauffer wrote of parties Garrod gave in her hut at Medmenham where she would entertain with a dish of peaches and brandy. 

Legacy

Dorothy Garrod became the first woman to hold a professorial chair at Cambridge University in 1939 when she was appointed to the Disney Chair of Archaeology. She was awarded this prestigious position nine years before women could be awarded degrees from the University. Garrod was the Disney Professor from 1939 to 1952 and is still the only woman to have held this position. When standing for the professorship, Garrod remarked to her colleague Glyn Daniel, ‘I shan’t get it but I thought I’d give the electors a run for their money.’

Garrod retired from Cambridge in 1952 to continue her field work excavating a prehistoric Magdalenian site in France before returning to the Middle East to excavate rock shelters in Lebanon. Garrod passed away in Cambridge in 1968 at the age of 76. As well as her DSc from Oxford, she received honorary degrees from the universities of Toulouse, Poitiers and Pennsylvania. Garrod was also awarded a C.B.E in 1965. In 2019, the University of Cambridge named a building after Garrod at Newnham College, further cementing her legacy as an inspirational figure.

Jane Taylor, NCAP Metadata Assistant

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