Obituary: Dame Ingrid Roscoe, former Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire

An acknowledged expert on British sculpture, she was editor-in-chief and co-author of the definitive and scholarly Yale University Press biographical dictionary of the principal practitioners from 1600 to 1851.

Ingrid Mary Allen was born in May 1944 in the unusual surroundings of Rugby School in Warwickshire. Her father, Dr Arthur Allen, was a squadron leader in the RAF and was at the time in Devon with the forces mobilising for D-Day. An old school friend of his – who was to be Ingrid’s godfather – was a house-master at Rugby and offered a refuge for Arthur’s wife, Else (née Markenstam).

Embodying the impulsive spirit of the times, Else had come to England from Sweden in February 1940, to marry Arthur, a man she had met only three times. She boarded the last civilian ship to make it safely across the North Sea.

Dr Allen died during Ingrid’s childhood and in 1958 her mother married the Yorkshire industrialist Brigadier Kenneth Hargreaves, who himself served as Lord-Lieutenant in the 1970s.

The family moved to Wetherby and Ingrid studied English for a year at Nottingham University, but abandoned her degree course at 19 to marry Yorkshireman Marshall Roscoe.

As a young mother, settled near Wetherby, Ingrid started to become involved in voluntary activities, first locally and then nationally, choosing principally to support arts-orientated causes. She also began to publish articles on aspects of the fine and applied arts.

In 1980, with her three children at school, she enrolled at Leeds University and took a BA in the Fine and Decorative Arts and then a PhD on aspects of 18th century British sculpture, which was adapted for publication by the Walpole Society.

She lectured at Leeds University through most of the 1990s and was presented with an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in July 2010.

Her appointment as Lord Lieutenant followed three years as a Vice Lord-Lieutenant and then as Deputy to John Lyles, who held the post from 1992 to 2004.

Upon her retirement, she told The Yorkshire Post: “I could have done one more year – you retire at 75. But I reckon, time to think about other things.”

The present Lord Lieutenant, Ed Anderson, said she had served the role with “love, energy and devotion” and would “forever be loved and revered here”.

Dame Ingrid had been High Steward of Selby Abbey since 2000 and her patronages included the Prince’s Trust for West Yorkshire, the National Mining Museum, the Royal British Legion in West Yorkshire, the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Yorkshire Historic Churches and the Yorkshire Volunteers Regimental Association.

She was appointed Dame Commander in 2017.

She is survived by her husband, son Nick, daughters Emma and Katie, and their families.