CASTLEY, Annie Elizabeth
As Annie Elizabeth Butchard, she was born at Milton-next-Gravesend, Kent in 1871, daughter of George Butchard (1838-6 August 1901), engineer ship builder & ship-owner, and his wife Mary Jane Gibb (1841-1896), eldest daughter of William Gibb of Above Bar, Southampton, who married at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Southampton on 10 April 1860. In 1881, Annie was a 10-year-old, living at ‘Ellerslie’, Milton-next-Gravesend with her parents, 42-year-old George, born at Liverpool and 40-year-old Scottish born Mary Jane, and her four siblings, Agnes Annie 20, born Southampton, George William (1864-1945), John Alexander 11 and Jane Douglas (1872-1963), all born at Gravesend, and they were still there in 1901. Annie was educated at Gravesend Municipal Technical School and in 1895 her work passed for an Art Teacher's Certificate from Gravesend School of Science and Art. By 1911, Annie was on a visit to 21 Cromwell Crescent, Kensington, London, the home of 83-year-old widow, Georgiana Luke and her 39-year-old daughter Mabel Larkins Luke. Annie married at St Martin’s, London in 1916, as his second wife, Thomas Gilbert Power Castley (1871-1952), who was born at Earl Stonham, Suffolk and was a schoolteacher at Henley-on-Thames, from when Annie painted under the name of Annie Castley. Her husband had married his first wife Margaret Mary Wright in 1902 and they divorced in 1913 after having one child. Annie was a watercolour landscape painter and a member of the Ipswich Art Club 1932-1935 where she exhibited from ‘Clock House’, Little Stonham, Suffolk, eight works, the subjects were mostly local views and rural scenes including in 1932 ‘The Garden Gate’, 'A Surrey Farmyard', ‘An Autumn Tangle’ and ‘Through the Barn Doors’, in 1933 'From Christchurch Quay' and 'Lilac', in 1935 'Crag Path, Aldeburgh' and 'Clock House, Little Stonham'. Annie Elizabeth Castley was of 253 Nacton Road, Ipswich when she died at The Nook, Melbury Osmond, Dorset on 31 May 1949, aged 78, and buried at Melbury Osmond.