Margot Lean was one of a generation of Oxford students who engaged with the Oxford Group in the 1930s and spent the rest of her life working with MRA. As an agnostic, reading Botany at Somerville College, she ‘gave her life to God’ as an experiment – if he was there she might find him, if he wasn’t, she would lose nothing. To her amazement the next day she felt liberated from her paralysing self-consciousness. Three of her friends were so surprised that they followed her example, with lasting consequences.
After graduating Margot worked with the Oxford Group in London on what would now be called the comms team – one of her roles was to write a regular column for the Methodist Recorder – and also in Scandinavia. During World War II she led the band of volunteer landgirls who grew vegetables for the Liverpool market in the grounds of Tirley Garth in Cheshire, which later became an MRA conference centre. In 1946 she married Garth Lean, whom she had known since Oxford days. They had two children, Geoffrey (1947) and Mary (1952).
Their first years of married life involved periods in London, Tirley Garth (twice) and Sweden. When Garth had a heart attack in 1955, it became clear that they needed to find a settled home, and in 1958 they moved to Oxford, where they lived for the rest of their lives. A constant stream of students, postgraduates and visitors from all over the world came through their home. Many of them left with new determination to use their lives to create a better world.
Margot was a proud Yorkshirewoman, with a down-to-earth warmth and humour. She was a keen naturalist and gardener, and was fascinated by the links between faith and science.
