Melanie Barber lived from 1943 to 29th June 2012 and was at Friends’ School 1954-1959. The following obituary was written by Barry Barber for the Old Scholars' Magazine in 2013. This has been uploaded here on 14/07/2024.

“Melanie Barber was born on 16th February 1943 together with her stronger twin brother, Ondré. At a very young age she suffered coeliac disease which involved her in an uncomfortable stay at Great Ormond Street Hospital, having frequent intra-muscular injections at a time when parents were neither able nor expected to visit children very frequently. She was greatly relieved when my parents arranged an irregular discharge to bring her home and the experience gave her an enduring dislike of hospitals. She was prescribed a rather curious diet which included grass, dried bananas which she hated [but were treasured in wartime by the rest of the family], and folic acid tablets which were mixed up with black current juice to make them more palatable. Eventually, she began to thrive and she took ballet lessons to help
strengthen her legs.

In 1954, she and Ondré followed me and Benita to Friends’ School Saffron Walden, where we had been sent during the invasion scare in 1941 – a fact that worried mother to the end of her long life. They both left FSSW after O-levels and continued their studies in Brighton and, in due course, Ondré went to Christ’s College Cambridge and Melanie went to Bedford College London, where she read History and obtained a BA(IIa) in 1965. She was so interested in one series of lectures based on Dr Irene Churchill’s two volume work on Canterbury Administration, that she promptly went round to Lambeth Palace to see if she could obtain a job there. At that time the Librarian, Dr Bill, said that there were no vacancies but that if she obtained an Archive qualification, they might think about it. Melanie duly enrolled on an Archive Diploma course at Liverpool University and a year later she was awarded a Diploma in the Study of Records and Administration of Archives (DRAA). Accordingly, she went back to Lambeth Palace and this time she was successful. It would be trite to say that, amazingly, she retired thirty six years later, and it is true but there is much more to say than that.

In 1966 Melanie was initially employed to catalogue the papers of Archbishop William Temple – as she records, a much undervalued Archbishop. In her own words she “had no intention or expectation of staying very long but Lambeth grows on one. Also, its collections are quite unique – it is the British Library in microcosm and it has the advantage of being somewhat manageable. The more one stays the more one appreciates the range and richness of the collections. The real beauty of Lambeth is that all the collections interrelate – the manuscripts, archives and printed, they enrich each other – they embody the heritage of the Church and the Archbishops”. So Melanie stayed with her beloved collections for thirty six years. She helped innumerable readers and academics to find their way through the collections and assisted many archivists in their careers and provided four Archbishops with appropriate material for their various needs.

In 1987 Archbishop Runcie awarded Melanie a Lambeth MA for her work and researches in the Library with the following words: “The association of religious experience with sound learning is ever before us at Lambeth through having here one of the best of libraries. Melanie Barber has worked in it for over twenty years and for most of that time has been Deputy Librarian and Archivist. I can speak with real feeling of her capacity to produce for me at a moment’s notice the apt quotation or the appropriate historical allusion when I am called upon to speak of the foundation of the Church in Australia or examples of sanctity or eccentricity among my predecessors. Her expert knowledge as Librarian and Archivist is second to none – or second only to Dr Bill. It is ironic but wholly appropriate that a desperate Archbishop in search of an historical allusion or reference should so often have been rescued from banality, platitude or inaccuracy by a calm and knowledgeable Quaker!”

Melanie had become that paradoxical figure of a Quaker at the heart of the Church of England. Someone who was around, and had been around for a very long time, to help anyone needing access to or information from the amazing collections contained in the Library at Lambeth Palace.

Melanie was involved right at the beginning of the Church of England Records Society and she served as its Executive Secretary for the first ten years until she was hospitalised, finally becoming a Vice President. Apart from the administrative effort that this involved the society produced some eighteen academic volumes for posterity and she was proud to be invited to edit and plan the Society’s 18th volume “From the Reformation to the Permissive Society – a Miscellany to Celebration of the 400th Anniversary of The Lambeth Palace Library”. She developed the plan and persuaded the authors, but in the end was finally too ill to do the actual editing – but the other editors, Stephen Taylor and Gabriel Sewell, continued with her plan and kindly attributed the first editorship to her!

One of her last two major professional activities was to write a Presidential address for the Friends’ Historical Society entitled “Tales of the Unexpected: Glimpses of Friends in the Archives of Lambeth Palace Library”. In the early days of Quakerism, Archbishops required their bishops to advise them of the number of Quakers and other dissenters living in their various dioceses! The Quaker testimony against the payment of tithes to the local incumbent was a particular issue.

In addition to her work for the Church of England, she naturally became involved with the Library Committee at Friends House, serving on it for twenty years and acting as clerk for the last nine years of that time. She also served on the Quaker Committee on Christian Relationships for seven years, which was concerned with ecumenical rather than personal activities. In addition, she edited successfully the Friends Quarterly for some five years. She became a trustee of the George Gorman Memorial Fund, which had been established by her sister Benita and me. With other trustees she found ways of supporting Young Friends in various new and exciting activities.

In her personal life, she continued her contacts with her “Young Friends” group long after any of them qualified for the title. She enjoyed many walking holidays in the Lake District and abroad. She loved to go to the ballet and classical concerts – a habit she developed during her student days in London. She liked nothing better than to go to Sadlers Wells or Covent Garden to enjoy the ballet – initially standing in the gods, before she could afford the luxury of a comfortable seat!!

Melanie suffered the death of her twin brother, Ondré, in 1998; she retired shortly afterwards in 2002, and this was followed by her mother’s death in 2004. She continued to work on the development of a Clergy Database for the next few years in the Library but she returned from a Turkish holiday with shingles. Thereafter she had some years of indifferent health which worsened following a nasty dose of pneumonia in 2009 which then led to the periods of and care at home which dogged her last three and a half years. Somewhat unexpectedly, Melanie died on 29th June following a major stroke, and her funeral took place at the Downs Crematorium in Brighton. However, her real Memorial Service took place in the Chapel at Lambeth Palace on 20th November when some one hundred and twenty friends and colleagues gathered together to witness to the Grace of God in her life in the place that she
loved so much and had served so well for over thirty six years.”

A further obituary and account of Melanie’s life can be found here and here.