Flower Festival 2012

 

Perrin arrangement

For three days (21st to 24th June 2012) our beautiful Georgian church was full from top to bottom with arrangements inspired by the lives of people buried in the Additional Burial Ground.

They reflected the diversity of the population and the changes in village life over 200 years. Some were well known national figures and some were local personalities.

Subjects included


 Actors

Both on stage and screen – the colourful manager of His Majesty’s Theatre, Sir Herbert Beerbohn Tree;  the reclusive matinee idol and Jewish refugee, Anton Walbrook;  the glamorous wife of Rex Harrison and star of ‘Genevieve’ Kay Kendall; and Gerald Du Maurier, the first Captain Hook.


 Writers, journalists and illustrators

Reflection of an arrangement in glass

A rich diversity – the satirist Peter Cook; the cookery writer Eliza Acton; the novelist, illustrator and cartoonist George Du Maurier; the philosopher and theologian Evelyn Underhill; the editor of ‘New Age’ Alfred Richard Orage; the editor of ‘Punch’ Evoe Knox and his wife the children’s illustrator Mary Shepard; and  the children’s writer Eleanor Farjeon and the nursery rhyme illustrator Leonard Leslie Brooke.


 Campaigners and people concerned with the environment

Inspiring people like the suffragette and pacifist Eva Gore Booth; Peggy Jay who fought to preserve Hampstead and the Heath; Walter Besant who was also passionate about Hampstead and the Heath and one of the founders of the Heath and Hampstead Society and Richard Cox Johnson who loved the natural world – and then what we have come to appreciate – Nature in the ABG


 Local families

lilies and the ceilingSeveral generation of their families lived in, or still live in, Hampstead – Bert and Becky Matthews, the Pearly King and Queen who raised so much for charity; Henry Kippin, the last of three generations of chimney sweeps; and Michael Perrin the eminent scientist who invented polythene and whose son still lives in Hampstead. Also the residents of Church Row, many of whom are buried in the ABG.


 Brave and tragic lives

The incredibly brave Ernest Gidden who took six hours to diffuse a bomb on Hungerford Bridge and averting what would have been a terrible tragedy; contrasting with the five Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired ‘Peter Pan’ but most of whose lives ended tragically; and the sad death of the infant Charles John Birkbeck.


Our congregation

pink lilies in front of brass eaglePeople that we remember with love and affection like our former warden Sarah Knight; the much loved Eric and Jamie Hathorn and the talented musicians Barbara and Martindale Sidwell (Martindale was also our organist). Also those of earlier years like Alfred Bell who designed the font and beautiful stained glass windows and Frederick Goldsmith who was bishop of North Western Australia and then came to be vicar at Hampstead Parish Church.

 

 

 

Photographs of the Flower Festival by Jo Siddall with contributions from Angela James, Peter Ginnings and Ian Weatherhead

This page was last updated on February 5th, 2013.

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