Christabel Powell grew up in Monmouthshire, where she continued to live for most of her life. She studied architecture at Cardiff and Cheltenham and worked as an architect for various employers and subsequently as a sole practitioner in both Wales and Oxford. She held master’s degrees from both Oxford Brookes University (in Building Conservation) and the University of Oxford (in Theology), as well as a doctorate from Durham University (for her thesis on the Liturgical Vision of Augustus Pugin). In addition to two books on Pugin, she published Ring in the Old, Ring in the New (1981); The Bells and Campaniles of Campania (1988) and Walter Powell’s Gwent (1978). Up until her death at the end of 2017, she was also a Research Member of the Senior Common Room at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
