On Wednesday 23rd October 1918, just before the end of WW1, Blantyre had a rather special visitor.
Poetess and dramatist Lady Margaret Sackville visited the Masonic Hall in High Blantyre’s Main Street to give a rendition of “Scottish Ballads and English Folk Songs”. Several ballads of her own composing were given too.
Born in Mayfair, London in 1881, she began to write poetry at an early age. At the outbreak of World War I, she joined the anti-war Union of Democratic Control. In 1916 she published a collection of poems called The Pageant of War. In 1936 Sackville moved to Cheltenham, where she lived for the rest of her life. She died of a heart condition at Rokeby Nursing Home, Cheltenham, in 1963.