BILTING COURT

"The four years we spent in Chelsea had transformed my outlook and the possibilities open to me... But I am essentially provincial and, after four years, I had had enough of Chelsea...

​

It was while working on the mural that we came across the house that we still live in.... for our growing family it seemed ideal, having a large hall-like room which would make a studio and also being on the bus route between Canterbury and Ashford... Apart from the 30ft studio the house had a series of little rooms and was largely of timber construction. Our vicar, a historian, claimed that it was a medieval house, and certainly the building was primitive enough. Then there were about six and a half acres of garden and field, and behind were woods that stretched in all directions, with deer, badgers, rabbits, adders and a few pheasants."

​

"The children were all good models; they seemed to sense how important the task was. Once when I was drawing Charlotte playing a recorder, she hung onto the pose long after most children would have been screaming with boredom and fatigue, and I remember how amazed and grateful I was. I think it was the influence of their mother, who was not only a lovely and untiring model, but made the task important so that I should have every help to do a worthwhile job."