Gigi Crompton, one of our Trust’s founding members and eminent Cambridgeshire botanist.
Gigi Crompton, one of our Trust’s founding members and eminent Cambridgeshire botanist, died peacefully at home in Swaffham Bulbeck on 12 January 2020, aged 97.
Gigi was born on 16 April 1922 at Feldafing in Germany, the only child of Georg Richter, an American art historian, and his wife Amalie, the Baroness Zündt von Kenzingen. Her godfather was the author Thomas Mann.
During Gigi’s childhood the family moved to Italy, England then to the USA as war broke out in 1939. After her studies at Westminster Art School in London, Gigi trained in art conservation in New York and continued to work as a picture restorer when she returned to England at the end of the war.
Gigi married American David “Buzzy” Crompton, a town planner, in 1949 and took up residence in Thriplow, Cambridgeshire. Gigi joined the then recently formed Cambridgeshire & Isle of Ely Naturalists’ Trust in 1957, a forerunner of the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.
Gigi’s interest in wildflowers started in the 1950s, when she studied at Cambridge University Botany School. She went on to develop pioneering methodology for surveying rare plants and during her lifetime she published numerous botanical papers on important habitats in East Anglia including Wicken Fen and Devil’s Dyke. She was recorder for Cambridgeshire for 30 years with the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, and her research into historical plant records culminated in the publication of Cambridgeshire Flora Records since 1538, the definitive historic and geographical archive of our local wildflower species records, including many rarities and new county records.
In 1965 Gigi and David bought a house in Swaffham Bulbeck and set out transforming the gardens, planting specimen trees, an orchard and creating a kitchen garden. David died in 2007 and Gigi continued to live in the house and garden they created together.
In addition to the wealth of knowledge, encouragement and enthusiasm that Gigi shared with generations of botanists, she gave our Wildlife Trust a very generous gift in her Will. We remember with gratitude Gigi’s life and her legacy.
