Telford, 5 July 2025
In line with the new criteria set in 2024 it is with great pleasure that the Trustees of NWR (National Women’s Register) announce Jenny Lee (Horsham NWR) and Maggie Rowlands (Sheffield / Fulwood) as joint winners of the 2025 Mary Stott Award.
Maggie Rowlands is pictured on the left with Jenny Lee on the right.
The Mary Stott Award is presented annually to an NWR member who has made an exceptional contribution to NWR, her community or a wider initiative. Candidates for the award exemplify exceptional personal development and unswerving commitment to their cause, and are nominated by NWR members.
Jenny’s Horsham group colleague commented in nominating her:
I would like to recommend Jenny Lee as an exceptional candidate to receive this Award, based on her truly outstanding service, loyalty and devotion to NWR over the last 40 years.
In the early 1980s, she set up a new group entitled Staffordshire Moorlands, became group leader and started spreading the word of NWR locally. Regular meetings followed, together with contacts made with other nearby groups and within a few years started to organize events. Many day conferences followed , including a William Morris conference with 100 delegates, Medieval Women, The Psychology of Love and in 2007 she was on the organizing committee for the National Conference at Keele University which she combined with organizing an exchange visit with the NWR group in Briele, Netherlands. In 2010 she organized another day conference for Staffordshire NWR groups in the Peak District – this involved a lot of walking in the local countryside and some delegates camped out overnight. It was so successful that it was repeated the following year. In 2013 she organized a local treasure hunt in Leek and a day conference in Cheddleton which involved guided tours of a local church with Pre-Raphaelite connections.
Jenny joined the Horsham NWR group, following a move to Horsham to support her two daughters and five grandchildren. She has been our Local Organiser and has been a shining light in the group, firstly organizing a Jubilee Afternoon Tea event in 2022 for South East Area NWR groups. Between 2022 and 2024, she encouraged members to walk the Sussex Literary Way which was recorded by Jenny by means of a blog, and the Diamond Way from Midhurst to Heathfield. Her photographic skills are phenomenal, and we were privileged to see the interesting places and people that were encountered as a result of her insightful photos. In 2023, she organized a day conference at Woking entitled Our World – the Future. Her latest two-day conferences – Forensics in Focus in 2024 and The Feel Good Factor in 2025 were sold out within days of being advertised and attracted NWR members from as far away as Middlesbrough, Crewe, Newport and Grantham. She is currently organizing a Whist with a Twist afternoon in Horsham for 40-50 NWR members from SE England. Needless to say, she has already started planning next year’s day conference in Horsham.
Jenny is very self-effacing and appreciative of any help and advice that she receives towards the organization of NWR events. She is very mindful of inclusion when it comes to selecting venues and ensures that they are wheelchair friendly with facilities, available car parking and reasonable proximity to a railway station and catering facilities to enable all delegates with allergies or specific food requirements to be considered, such as gluten free and dairy free items. Jenny was also very supportive of the formation of the new Southwater group which now has 14 paid up members.
Maggie’s Sheffield / Fulwood Group colleagues commented in nominating her:
There was an idea. Conceived on a bus. Waiting to be born. A long gestation.
But, finally, it arrived in the world, wanting to grow and realise its potential. It needed someone with energy, vision and drive and found that person in Maggie Rowlands.
Maggie chaired the 2025 NWR Sheffield Conference Planning Group and nurtured the idea into reality. She pushed it forward with our group and inspired them to help. She engaged Sheffield Crookes Group and they joined us. She found the right people to do the jobs that needed doing – the budget, the quiz, finding speakers, running the workshops, sorting the foyer stalls, seeking out volunteers, and researching other things for attendees to do. She gave them power but kept a finger on the pulse so no detail was overlooked. She led the marketing of the conference. Programme ideas came thick and fast from her and everyone on the team, but she was able to have the vision to edit these until the final offering hung together perfectly. Don’t think she bossed us or overrode us – each decision was negotiated.
(And, bear in mind, during this year she developed a life-threatening illness, underwent major surgery and suffered a grievous bereavement!)
And was it a success? How did we measure that? Financially? It made a large profit. Attendance? Only five tickets unsold – the hall was filled to overflowing. Effect on Sheffield? So many people who came for the first time to our city were amazed at what they found. Great art, friendly people, green spaces, good transport. Will they come back? Probably. Support to NWR? In financial straits, the organisation benefited hugely. Evaluation? Few adverse comments, overwhelming praise.
Yes, it was a success.
But that’s not everything that Maggie has done during her 45 year membership of NWR. If we just confine ourselves to the local for now, there are friendships, Maggie in the centre of many. She has had many lively programme ideas, enthusiastically carried forward. She has shared the LO role several times. Very recently, she has been a supportive member of the recruitment group, helping to set up the fourth NWR Group here in Sheffield. And she has given our group a national presence.
She participated in the first Sheffield Conference in 1984. It was her idea in 2001 to have a spaced themed TTT. In 2012, she persuaded the group to guest edit the NWR Magazine, heralding change in the format and content. (She’s always charmingly persuasive!) The group has engaged with the national agenda because of her enthusiasm. She led a virtual tour of the NWR website, so few people in our group used. While we were in ‘Zoom only’ mode she led a discussion on ‘Whither NWR’ responding to falling membership, sending a summary of the points made to the Chair of Trustees.
Maggie is a regular attendee at conferences and has played an active role in planning several of them. She chaired the 2009 Leeds Conference Planning Team and went on to advise the Warwick team in 2010. She was then asked to help with the Birmingham one in 2020 which was unfortunately cancelled because of post-Covid fears of mixing in large crowds. Following the 2024 ‘Women of Steel’ Conference she has offered advice to both the Telford group and the 2026 Beccles planning group.
Finally, when Gill Wignall took over the Chair of Trustees role, Maggie was there to act as her mentor.
Maggie’s career began in teaching but, in 1980, she joined the voluntary sector to work initially in training volunteers locally for Home Start, a children’s charity. After setting up the group in Sheffield she became the Development Officer for the north of England then took over as national Training Director. She set up a national training programme for all volunteers, staff and, importantly, that under-supported group, the Trustees. This was eventually followed by rolling out that programme in places such as Prague, Malta and Johannesburg.
After retirement she was head-hunted to Chair ‘Voluntary Action Sheffield’ where for four years she steered and influenced the development of the charity through a difficult period. That it survived was due in no small part to Maggie’s energetic and inspiring lead. It is still extant today.
We believe Mary Stott would have been proud of Maggie, as we are to nominate her.
About the Mary Stott Award
Mary Stott was the first and longest serving editor of ‘The Guardian’ newspaper’s Women’s page, and it was under her aegis that ‘The Guardian’ provided a launch pad for the National Housewives Register (NHR), a forerunner organisation of NWR.
Mary Stott was a great supporter and friend to NWR; over 40 years she acted as an informal advisor, served as a trustee and was appointed an Honorary Life Member. Following Mary’s death in 2002, the NWR Mary Stott Award was founded as a lasting tribute to her contribution to NWR.