1. Margaret Gelling served as President of the English Place-Name Society from 1986 to 1998, and Vice-President of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences from 1993 to 1999, as well as being a Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, Margaret Gelling was an elected fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries of London and the British Academy.
Margaret Gelling proceeded to work for the English Place-Name Society from 1946 to 1953, focusing her research on the place-names of Oxfordshire and Berkshire.
Margaret Gelling's work focused on establishing the Old English origins of English place-names in the Midlands, and her approach sought to connect toponyms to geographical features in the landscape.
Margaret Gelling Joy Midgley was born to a lower-middle-class family in Manchester on 29 November 1924, the daughter of an insurance salesman.
Margaret Gelling continued to work here for eight years, focusing her research on expanding and collating the place-names of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, a project that had been started before her by Frank Merry Stenton and his wife Lady Doris Stenton; her work in this field would see publication as the two volume The Place-Names of Oxfordshire.
Margaret Gelling would undertake research for a PhD from the University of London by correspondence, supervised by Albert Hugh Smith; devoted to the place-names of West Berkshire, her thesis was completed in 1957.
Margaret Gelling accompanied her husband on his archaeological excavations to various sites, both domestically and abroad.
Margaret Gelling lectured at Birmingham University on occasion, as well as running a summer school at Oxford.
Margaret Gelling went on to publish her three volumes of The Place-Names of Berkshire, which she followed with Signposts to the Past: Place-Names and the History of England, a book which "put her in an elevated position among English toponymists" and which saw revised editions in 1987 and 1997.
Peter Gelling died in 1983, while Margaret took on the presidency of the English Place-Name Society from 1986 to 1998, and then the Vice-Presidency of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences from 1993 to 1999.
Margaret Gelling continued lecturing widely until developing the illness from which she died.