Mary Marshall was a campaigner all her life, for women’s rights and animal welfare, access to arts education and support for those with mental health difficulties, and for the protection of Sheffield’s healthy street trees.

Despite a long term illness she travelled all over the city, often at short notice by taxi, to sit under threatened trees to prevent them being felled. As well as this dedication, she also found the time to work on a range of other activities for the campaign, like designing merchandise to help raise funds for STAG, and creating the amazing original STAG website – now a treasure-trove of historical material about the tree protection protests. She also was a keen attendee of the STARTS (Street Tree Art Sheffield) art-making sessions. Although dedicating a lot of time to the campaign, this was often done quietly and behind the scenes.

Mary passed away in July 2018, but her strong feelings on the causes of the street tree scandal compelled her to join the It’s Our City! campaign from the beginning, and to still be working earlier in that year on devising the original It’s Our City! pledges for the May 2018 elections.

Living close by, Mary spent many hours protecting trees from being felled on Spring Hill Rd, with her bright yellow STAG umbrella and flask. In 2019 and 2021 kerb work and tree root inspections were carried out on Spring Hill Rd. Tree roots were covered with sand and the pavements restored without needing the trees to be felled. Mary’s favourite tree is still standing.

[Thanks to Sarah Deakin for some of the above info, taken from her dedication to Mary in the It’s Our City! ‘Voices for Change’ poetry book]