A brown-paper parcel arrived at the National Trust in 1927. Inside was £100 and a note declaring that the money came from a mysterious group called Ferguson’s Gang. It was the beginning of one of the most eccentric conservation campaigns in British history.
The Gang’s members were women, largely anonymous to the public, who adopted elaborate aliases and delivered donations with a taste for theatre. Their names included Bill Stickers, Sister Agatha and Red Biddy. They wore masks, spoke in code and appeared unexpectedly at Trust offices. The performance made good copy, but the purpose behind it was serious: places of beauty and historic importance were being lost to development, neglect and private sale.
Their campaign emerged at a moment when the National Trust itself was still relatively young. The organisation needed money and publicity, and Ferguson’s Gang supplied both. Rather than treating preservation as a dry institutional concern, they turned it into adventure. Their gifts supported properties including Shalford Mill in Surrey and stretches of the Cornish coast.
Stonehenge became part of their story in 1929. The monument had entered national ownership earlier in the century, but the landscape around it remained vulnerable. Ferguson’s Gang contributed £500 towards the National Trust’s purchase of land near the stones. The donation helped protect the setting—not only the famous circle, but the open approach and sense of scale that shape the experience of seeing it.
Their methods were playful, yet also strategically modern. They understood that conservation needed a story people would repeat. Secrecy generated attention; attention generated support. At a time when women’s public authority was still constrained, disguise offered freedom to act, organise and command a national audience on their own terms.
The Gang continued until the Second World War, by which point it had raised thousands of pounds. Its members were not merely colourful benefactors. They helped establish an idea now central to heritage conservation: a landmark cannot be separated from its landscape, and public affection can be mobilised to defend both.
Today, visitors arriving at Stonehenge encounter wide chalk grassland rather than a monument hemmed in on every side. Part of that view survives because a group of masked women recognised that scenery, memory and history belonged together—and knew exactly how to make Britain pay attention.