Mari Friend's life to be celebrated at Bracken Hall centre

With her husband John, Mari opened the much-used countryside centre on May 30, 1981.

Born in Barnsley in 1936, Mari took an early interest in nature, possibly because of her father, Stan Micklethwaite, who had a keen interest in beekeeping and gardening. However, it wasn’t until 1971 - then the mother of four young children - that Mari passed, First Class, the Royal Horticultural Society exam in general horticulture and A-levels in botany, horticultural science and biology.

Bracken Hall Countryside Centre, 1981

Raucous rooks by Mari Friend

In 1975, Mari spent a year at the University of Warwick studying environmental sciences. Her passion for nature and desire to learn more went further when she began lecturing in horticulture, plant classification and ecology at Morley College, London. It was this combination of passion, personal and academic knowledge, and the desire to teach others about the wonders of nature that proved to be the inspiration for Bracken Hall Countryside Centre.

When, in 1980, Mari and John decided to return north from London, they bought Bracken Hall as a family home. The property also included a separate disused building in the garden, which had once been used to sell ice creams and refreshments to visitors to Shipley Glen, Bracken Hall Green and Baildon Moor.

With Mari’s desire to encourage others to enjoy and better understand the wonders of the natural world, as well as the history of the area, converting the disused tearoom into a countryside centre seemed to be the obvious thing to do.

This not only involved converting the building and installing fish tanks to show pond life and an active beehive, there were other displays that Mari developed to illustrate the story of different natural wonders and what visitors should look out for in the landscape.

To help her, Mari employed another of her talents, that of an artist. Combining detailed knowledge and the ability to explain things in a way that others could understand, she created coloured illustrations and diagrams that were not only informative but had a beauty of their own. Even if the viewer didn’t want to read the detail, they still made a colourful addition to the displays. They also set about gathering as much information as they could about the area and its past, which they used to produce a range of guided walks and trail guides.

Field Edge by Mari, a careful observer of nature

Three years after they set up Bracken Hall Countryside Centre, Mari and John moved to East Sussex, but that was not the end of the centre. It had by now established itself as an important and valued resource, so Bracken Hall and the centre was bought by the then West Yorkshire County Council who continued to operate it as a countryside centre. A few years after that, West Yorkshire County Council ceased to exist and ownership of the property passed to Bradford Council who redeveloped and expanded it as an educational centre and museum, still under the name Bracken Hall Countryside Centre.

Bracken Hall Countryside Centre as it is today

After leaving Bracken Hall, Mari, who died in 2016, started to write a nature and folklore column for Sussex Country Weekly and then penned a number of books which combined her skill to communicate and illustrate the wonders of nature that she loved so much. The first of her published books, Small Wonders, received the Sir Peter Kent Conservation Book Prize, and other titles written by Mari include, Countryside Daybook, Winter Survival, Discovering Nature’s Secrets and Prose and Verse In Praise of Nature.

Bracken Hall Countryside Centre will be open from 10am - 5pm on Saturday June 29 June and Sunday June 30, with an exhibition, children’s activities, walks, storytelling and other events. A full programme will be available nearer the time on the Friends of Bracken Hall Countryside Centre Facebook page, facebook.com/FoBHCC and the Baildon Town Council website baildontowncouncil.gov.uk/bracken-hall-countryside-centre.