Kate Fielden, who has died aged 79 after a short illness, was many things – an archaeologist, an editor, a curator – but to me she seemed almost a tutelary deity: the guardian spirit of Wiltshire’s ancient places, keeping watch over some of Britain’s most sacred landscapes.
I first met Kate in 2013, when she invited me to become president of the Stonehenge Alliance, a group opposed to destructive road developments in the Stonehenge landscape, and of which she was the leading light. She was the gentlest, politest, most self-effacing of women; but she was also the steeliest, the most formidable, the most forensic in defence of what she thought needed defending. As president I was only ever the merest figurehead; it was always Kate who was the doughtiest in fighting the good fight.
