Laurentia McLachlan

Dame Laurentia McLachlan, OSB (née Margaret McLachlan) was born in 1866 in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland. In 1884 she joined the Benedictine Abbey at Stanbrook Abbey. In 1931 she was elected Abbess of Stanbrook. Dame Laurentia, as she became known, served the wider Benedictine community as a member of the commission, set up that same year, with an aim to modernise the various constitutions that governed the conditions of monastic life for women in England.

She was a pioneer in the restoration of the Gregorian chant in England and a leading authority on music and medieval manuscripts. In 1934 her work was recognised by Pius XI who bestowed upon her the Bene Merenti medal for her contribution to Church music.^{[citation needed]}

She died in 1953, having spent seventy of her 87 years within the strictly enclosed monastery. McLachlan was one of five figures chosen to represent one thousand years of "the inspired Christian life" at Worcester Cathedral's Window of the Millennium.^{[citation needed]}

A stage play by Hugh Whitemore, The Best of Friends (based on a book by Dame Felicitas Corrigan), provides a window on the friendship of McLachlan with Sir Sydney Cockerell and George Bernard Shaw through adaptations from their letters and writings. In a 2006 production at the Hampstead Theatre, Patricia Routledge played the part of Dame Laurentia.