People, places and events in the parish's history

Hilda Willis, Watercolourist

A chance meeting with Hilda’s granddaughter

Hilda Willis watercolourist
Watercolour of Compton Street seen from Hurdle Way (date unknown)
One of three clergy widows living in the same house, Compton Down, Hilda Willis was an accomplished watercolourist.

She recorded some lovely views of our parish between the 1930s and 1950s

Quite by chance, last year, I visited Johnby Hall in Cumbria,  a wonderful B&B run by Anna and Henry Howard.

I was so delighted by this unusual and utterly charming B&B that I decided to go back for a holiday this year.

Anna Howard’s mother, Frances Parsons, heard that I was returning to Johnby Hall. She had seen in the Visitors’ book that I lived on Compton Down, so was determined to meet me.

Memories of Compton in the early to mid 20th Century

We had a wonderful meeting. It transpired that Frances had many happy memories of visiting Compton Down as a child, in the 1950s.   Her Great Grandmother, Mary Cremer (née Awdry of Thomas the Tank engine fame), her grandmother  Hilda Willis, an artist and watercolourist, and her great aunt  Vera Wethered all lived together in Peter Betts’s house – Compton Down, Hurdle Way. They were all Clergy widows!  Mary Cremer died there in 1959 aged 103.

Hilda Willis watercolourist
Compton Street painted on 21 June 1937 by Hilda Willis

However, not only did Frances have these wonderful memories but she also has the most enchanting collection of watercolours of Compton Down and the environs, painted by her grandmother, Hilda Willis,  mostly in about the 1950s. She brought these with her to show me.

I photographed the pictures she was able to bring and she has since, very generously and thoughtfully, sent me photos of a whole lot more which I have now shared with Peter Betts and with Adrian Walmsley.  We are hoping that we may be able to produce some postcards from a selection of the photographs that we have of her paintings.

This view along Compton Street appeared on the front cover of the Parish Magazine for September 2013.

This is an edited version of the article by Susie Evershed in the September 2013 Parish Magazine


In 1878 Mary Cremer, née Awdry (1856-1959), had married Frederic Daustini Cremer  (b1848, d1927 at Shawford), sometime Vicar of Eccles, Hon Canon of Rochester.

Their daughter Hilda Mary Willis, née Cremer, married Rev. John Willis in 1904 in Eccles. She was born in 1879 at St. Petersburg, Russia, and died in 1971.

Another daughter, Vera Frances Cremer (1884-1972), married a widower, Rev Arthur James Wethered, in 1931. He was living at Compton Down at the time of his death in 1939. They had no children but on her marriage to Arthur Wethered Vera acquired several step-children.