Penny Uprichard was a “force of nature” who took Fife Council to the Supreme Court to protect her beloved St Andrews.
She died peacefully in her home in the Fife town on February 9, aged 87.
Ultimately, Miss Penelope Uprichard lost her four year legal battle which cost her almost £200,000.
But during the subsequent decade she continued to campaign to preserve the historic character of the town she had called home since childhood.
Penny’s family moved to St Andrews from Northern Ireland when she was seven years old.
They joined her grandparents David and Janet McCaw, who had built their home, now known as Hepburn Hall, in Hepburn Gardens.
Her mother Grace, who worked in a flower shop in the town, later built Little Ridge nearby.
Penny was sent south for school and took a secretarial course in the 1950s.
She worked for a few years for a firm of solicitors in London before emigrating briefly to Canada.
On her return to the capital she began working at Great Ormond Street Hospital. She looked after public relations and fundraising there for 23 years until her retirement.
Back home to St Andrews
In retirement she returned to St Andrews and to Little Ridge.
And she played a pivotal role in trying to prevent what she saw as overdevelopment and overcrowding of the town.
Penny was horrified by a 20-year-vision for St Andrews published by Fife Council.
The 2006 Fife Structure Plan set the scene for construction of at least 1,000 new houses, business and science parks and a distributor road to the west of the town.
She launched an audacious legal challenge to the planning blueprint.
It was twice rejected by Scottish judges in the Court of Session.
Undeterred, she took her case to the UK Supreme Court in London in 2013.
But ultimately she lost and was left with legal bills of almost £200,000.
And the St Andrews West expansion went ahead.
Afterwards she told The Courier the decision meant St Andrews would likely be “overwhelmed by development”.
She said: “To be unable to challenge decisions, except by risking enormous amounts of money, is not democracy.”
Miss Uprichard told the Daily Mail at the time that having children and no mortgage had enabled her to take such action.
Friend and former planning convener of St Andrews Preservation Trust, David Middleton, described Penny as “a force of nature”.
He said: “She was a tenacious defender of the historic town where she spent her later years.
“Preventing the worst excesses of developer ambition was a never-ending task and she made history by personally – but with a great deal of public support – taking Fife Council to the Supreme Court in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the western extension of St Andrews which she felt would overwhelm the town’s infrastructure.”
Campaigning hid Penny’s kind and sensitive nature
Penny’s campaigning efforts hid her “kind and sensitive nature”, he said, revealing that she had kept in touch with some of the families she met at Great Ormond Street.
“She said what she thought but at the same time had a lot of charm.”
Penny was no doubt a thorn in the side of Fife’s planners.
But Mr Middleton said even her ‘adversaries’ in the planning arena held her in high esteem.
Challenging Fife Structure Plan was not the first time Penny had taken legal action in St Andrews’ name.
She single-handedly challenged introduction of parking ticket machines in the town centre. She was also part of group which fought the creation of the Fairmont St Andrews hotel and golf course.
Many other St Andrews developments over the years also met with her vocal opposition. These included creation of a golf course at Feddinch and construction of the new Madras College on the town’s southern hillside at Pipeland. The latter was eventually built at North Haugh instead.
For many years Penny was a member of both St Andrews Preservation Trust and the Royal Burgh of St Andrews Community Council.
She served as planning convener for the latter, and former chair Kyffin Roberts said it was a role she took very seriously.
He said: “Whether you agreed with Penny or not you couldn’t help but be impressed by her tenacity.
“People used to say she objects to everything. She certainly didn’t but it was the objections that made the headlines.
Penny’s vintage Mini and her beloved garden
“She was committed to trying to preserve St Andrews in the way she remembered it.”
And, he said, Penny remembered a St Andrews with 2,000 students and a town centre populated by townsfolk.
Today the university has around 10,000 students, and a proliferation of student lets has created a transient community.
Almost as well known as Penny in St Andrews was the vintage Mini she zipped around in.
She looked after her burgundy motor meticulously, giving it a new lease of life around 10 years ago with a respray and refurbishment.
She also loved singing and was a talented chorister.
Tinned sardines for her garden herons
Her pride and joy, though, was her garden at Little Ridge. She would often share it with the public, hosting open days to raise money for charity.
She loved to feed and watch the wildlife which visited, including red squirrels, her favourites, hedgehogs, and even herons.
Mr Middleton said: “When she became housebound, a constant visitor to her French windows was a heron which preferred tinned sardines to the diminishing supply of trout in the Kinness Burn.
“It seems that word got around in the heron colony and the visiting heron could not always be identified as being the same bird!”
Donations at Penny’s funeral will go to the People’s Trust for Endangered Species.
Conversation