ENNION, Eric Arnold Roberts

1900 - 1981

Eric Arnold Roberts Ennion was born at Kettering, Northamptonshire on 7 June 1900, eldest child of Dr Octavius Roberts Ennion (1873-11 March 1928), a medical practitioner in Burwell, Newmarket, and his wife Ellen Maud née Goddard (12 September 1872-19 October 1946), who was born in Bury St Edmund's, Suffolk and they married at Mitford, Norfolk in 1900. Eric was educated at Epsom College and Caius College, Cambridge and medical training at St Mary's Hospital, London and worked in his father's practice as a general practitioner at Burwell on the fen borders of Cambridge, where he had spent his childhood. He married at St John's Church, Paddington, London on 4 April 1925, Evelyn Dorothy Dolbey Parke (4 June 1895-11 September 1978) of Stratford-on-Avon. A painter in watercolours of birds who had a solo exhibition at the Greatorex Gallery in London in April 1937 'Gamebirds, Ducks and Various' consisting of some 41 watercolours including birds of the Fenlands, Scotland, and Iceland. In 1939, a medical practitioner, living at Harlech House, High Street, Newmarket, Suffolk with his wife Evelyn, they had three children, two daughters and a son. To assist the National Trust in the purchase the Flatford Mill estate, Eric Ennion purchased Haybarn Cottage for £600 from the Trust to offset the cost of them buying the rest of the estate from Thomas Robert Pearl Parkington's widow. In 1945 Ennion was to become the first warden of the Field Studies Council's Flatford Mill Field Centre, Suffolk to whom the National Trust later leased Flatford Mill and Will Lott’s House and from 1950, Ennion was a founder and director of the Monks' House Bird Observatory at Seahouses, Northumberland, which he wrote about in 'The House on the Shore'. An artist specialising in birds and other natural history subjects, author, and illustrator of ten books, and a radio presenter and was mentor to Mary Newcomb. Ennion was a founder member and Honorary Vice President of the Society of Wildlife Artists. Eric Arnold Roberts Ennion died at The Bothy, Sahlbourne, Marlborough, Wiltshire on 28 February 1981.

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Works by This Artist