Lydia Somerville

Please describe yourself and your areas of interest.

I teach primary school aged children in Letchworth Garden City and run a kitchen garden at home as part of a small-holding. I have spent a good deal of my life campaigning for a greener world and live my life according to these beliefs. I enjoy making things: from knitting to weaving baskets, growing vegetables and cooking with them. I met my husband Robert after I had designed and started building my own eco-house, and we finished the project together. I live as lightly as I can on the planet, and love creating habitat for wildlife and beautiful spaces to share with friends neighbours and the wider public during open days.

Why did you become a Companion of the Guild?

I came to Ruskin as a maker, an environmentalist, a nature lover and an explorer of ideas. Like him, I love natural materials: crafted simply and lovingly. I have joined the Guild because I think Ruskin has a lot to say to us about the environment, social justice, the high price of an overly mechanized - and now digitalized - world, the value of meaningful work, the need and time for simple pleasures, and the importance of beauty for the human spirit. I would like to be a part of the Guild in promoting these things.