Image from the Skateguard Blog, Theresa Weld Blanchard and Rosemary Beresford at the 1918 U.S. Championships
joan rosemary cobbald sawle
Sport, Community and Voluntary Action
1890 - 1971
Suggested by Sally Atkins
Sally writes,
“Joan Rosemary Graves-Sawle born in London was the daughter of Dame Constance Mary (Daniel), and Sir Charles John Graves-Sawle, a retired Rear-Admiral and Baronet from Cornwall. In London she took up ice skating and in 1914 was able to enter and win the junior skating title which was held in St Moritz alongside the World Figure Skating Championships. In 1915 she married Honourable Seton R Beresford, set up home in New York where she continued her skating. In March 1918 she entered the International Style of Figure Skating Championships, later known as the US Figure Skating Championships where she beat her rival Theresa Weld Blanchard from Boston to become the first and only non US national to win it.
In 1932 she inherited the ancestral home of Penrice House near St Austell where she and her second husband, Colonel Ralph Patterson Cobbold, got involved in the local community of St Austell. As the last in her family was responsible for selling and gifting land to local organisations, a school, the rugby club, a hospital. The grand house and the remainder of the land were left in trust to become an old people’s rest home which it still is today. She was a great character and known locally as a community minded benefactor. When she died her championship skating didn’t even get a mentioned in her obituary.”