MARY BENNETT was an authoritative and goodhumoured Principal of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, from 1965 to 1980. She continued the expansion and modernisation of the college, begun under her predecessor Kathleen Major, in a period of change and unrest in the educational world. It was her skill and acumen that made this into a particularly happy time for the college.

She also strove, by her good offices on the university’s Hebdomadal Council, to bring a more orderly progression into Oxford’s procedures and to maintain, from 1975 onwards, an honourable role for the remaining women’s colleges.

The only child of H. A. L. Fisher, the historian and Warden of New College, Oxford, Mary Bennett was born in 1913 and educated at Oxford High School and Somerville College, where as a classical scholar she obtained a second in Mods and a first in Greats.

In 1936 a travelling scholarship from her college took her to Paris and Rome. On her return she settled down to research the organisation of the Roman grain supply, and her contribution is acknowledged by G. Rickman in his standard work, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (1980).

During the Second World War she worked first for the Ministry of Information and later for the BBC, supplying broadcasting material to foreign countries. In 1945 she was snapped up by the Colonial Office, where she became an established civil servant in 1948, having come out top of the list in the reconstruction examination of that year.

She worked first in the Mediterranean department; later in that of Information; and finally in that of East Africa. She was also for one year chairman of the Civil Service First Division Association.

In 1955 she married John Sloman Bennett, one of her colleagues, and in the following year retired to a life of domesticity in the country, combined with various external activities.

From 1960 she was a part-time teacher on the staff of Westminster Tutors. In 1961 she became honorary secretary of the Roman Society, on which she exercised a powerful and salutary influence, and in 1963 she was appointed to the selection board of the Elizabeth Nuffield Educational Trust. She was elected Principal of St Hilda’s early in 1965.

Her reported aside on accepting the principalship — that it couldn’t be worse than the presidency of her Women’s Institute — was as deceptively light as her manner in office. Deft in handling the problems that she faced as head of house and on the Hebdomadal Council, she was committed to principles which she was able to defend the better for maintaining the integrity of her position.

One matter that punctuated her principalship was the student unrest of 1968-70. Here, harking back perhaps to the 1930s (“all my friends were communists”), she was more obviously parti pris, taking pride in her St Hilda’s “Boadiceas”. Although on occasion she might appear distant, her humour betrayed generous warmth, and junior members approached her with respect and confidence.

Mary Bennett shared her husband’s love of music, and their lodgings became a centre of music-making in the college; with their encouragement and practical help, the subject came to flourish there, while the Schola Cantorum was one of the Oxford musical institutions with which they were beneficially associated.

When in 1977 she was made an honorary Fellow of her undergraduate college, the election was welcomed in Oxford as an honour well- deserved by a distinguished head of house. On her retirement in 1980, still at the height of her intellectual powers, St Hilda’s, too, made her an honorary Fellow, and her house near the college became a mecca for members visiting Oxford from all over the world.

It was during this period, when she would give the Association of Senior Members gripping impromptu addresses on life in inter-war Oxford, that she had the leisure to go through family papers, and that resulted in two engaging works on the official and domestic lives of its members. First came The Ilberts in India, 1882-1886: an Imperial Miniature (1995), then Who was Dr Jackson? Two Calcutta Families, 1830-1855 (2002), both presenting valuable information with clarity and humour. During the same period and into her nineties she continued to travel to France and Italy to visit friends and members of the family.

Defying illness to attend the college Gaudy in September, she enlivened it for everyone present.

Mary Bennett, principal of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, 1965-80, was born on January 9, 1913. She died on November 1, 2005, aged 92.