Daphne (Baring) Pollen (1904-1986)

She was born in Wimbledon (then Surrey, now London) and attended the Slade School of Fine Art (1918-1920) where she met Arthur Pollen to whom she was married in 1926, a year after being accepted into the Catholic Church. They both studied under Henry Tonks who encouraged Daphne to do murals. She was further encouraged by her well-known uncle, Maurice Baring, and illustrated two of his novels: A Triangle and Cat’s Cradle. Her best known works included a mural at All Hallows Church, East India Dock Road; an altar back at Campion Hall, Oxford; and, a group portrait of 40 English Martyrs at Stonor Park, Buckinghamshire, another version of which was presented to St. Peter's in Rome in 1970; a drawing of the writer Hilaire Belloc; and her autobiography entitled I Remember, I Remember. She and her husband (also an artist) had lived in London and kept a holiday home on Lambay Island just of the coast of County Dublin that was one of a complex of houses designed by Edwin Lutyens for her father. In 1963, their son, Francis designed their new home, Cray Clearing Cottage (see images), on the family estate at Harpsden Wood, just south of Henley-on-Thames, where she died.