Companions' day at Westmill
We were delighted to fill the small Village Hall in the beautiful Hertfordshire village of Westmill, with our Companions’ Day on 24 June 2017. Guild Companions and residents of the village came together, including some of the tenants who live in the Guild’s properties there.
Westmill Village Hall
The seven cottages, and one commercial property run as the village Tea Rooms, were given to the Guild by Companion Mary Hope Greg (1850-1949), the subject of a fascinating and entertaining talk on the day by Liz Mitchell. (Copies of Liz’s lecture are available from the Guild’s Shop.) Mrs Greg also created the Greg Trust to look after other amenities and properties in the village, and representatives of the Trust, and other helpers, contributed massively to the success of the day, especially Michael McRae who got things off to a great start with a short welcome and presentation on the Trust and the history of the village. This was followed by a presentation about the Guild by the Master, Clive Wilmer.
Inside Westmill Village Hall.
Lunch was served in a marquee in a nearby area of the village owned by the Greg Trust, and dedicated as a Children’s Playground. This was followed by a short presentation back at the Hall on Companion Charles Spooner, an Arts & Crafts architect who was friends with the Gregs and lived in the village. The speaker was Alec Hamilton, Spooner’s biographer, who then led a short walking tour of the village which included an impromptu visit to Dial House whose staircase is one of the notable architectural features of the village. The tour ended in St Mary Church, the Gregs’ and Spooners’ final resting place, where the churchwardens had mounted a small exhibition.
Thank you to everyone who joined us and for helping to make it an enjoyable and memorable occasion.
Many thanks to John Iles for all Westmill pics.
The Village Tea Rooms
PROGRAMME
1100 Arrival. Parking has been made available on the field adjacent to the Church.
1130 Introductions by Guild of St George and T & M Greg Trust.
1200 A talk by Liz Mitchell (see below).
1300 Lunch (for a discretionary donation) served at the Children's Playground marquee.
1400 A short talk on architect and Companion Charles Spooner (1862-1938) by his biographer Alec Hamilton, followed by a village tour, including a visit to the Greg memorials at Westmill Church.
‘Treasuring things of the least’:
Mary Hope Greg of Westmill (1850-1949)
A talk by Liz Mitchell
Mary Hope Greg (1850-1949) was a lifelong follower of John Ruskin, and a Companion of Ruskin's Guild of St George.
She was a passionate supporter of museums during the early 20th century, giving collections of domestic crafts and children’s toys to Manchester City Art Galleries and London’s Bethnal Green Museum. She established her own museum in the Hertfordshire village of Westmill as a memorial to her late husband, fellow collector and local landowner Thomas Tylston Greg. She later set up the T&M Greg Trust to preserve land and property in the village for future generations. She was also a keen amateur naturalist and watercolour painter, recording the changing seasons of the Hertfordshire countryside in her nature diaries, now in the collections of the Guild. She did most of this between the ages of 70 and 99.
Until recently, however, little was really known about her life. In this talk, Liz Mitchell shares the latest findings of her PhD research into Mrs Greg. She provides fascinating insights into the development of Mrs Greg's dedication to Ruskin from her early life in Liverpool as a member of a family of wealthy philanthropists, through to the diverse achievements of her old age.
Download the full-size poster.
You can read an article about Mary Greg which Liz wrote for a past issue of The Companion.