ELLIS, Harriet Grace Venn
Harriet Grace Venn Ellis was born at Chellington, Bedfordshire on 7 January 1877 and baptised on 9 March 1877, daughter of Revd Henry Venn Ellis (1851-7 February 1920) and his wife Ada Florence née Henman (1854-14 July 1919), who married at Bedford in 1874, and sometime after the birth of Harriet the family seems to have hyphenated their name to Venn-Ellis. On 18 June 1889, her father was instituted vicar of Stowmarket and Stowupland and later rural dean and rector of Alderton, both in Suffolk and by 1911, Harriet was a 36-year-old living at The Rectory, Outwell, Cambridgeshire with her parents, 59-year-old Henry, born Kilburn, London and 56-year-old Ada, born Stagsden, Bedfordshire, A landscape artist and a member of Ipswich Art Club 1928-1939 exhibiting nineteen works including views in Sussex and Cornwall, in 1935 she exhibited from St Joseph's Guest House, Cumberland Street, Woodbridge, two oil paintings 'Kyson Point in November' and 'Willie Lott's Cottage, Flatford' and in 1937 three works, an oil 'Fowey Harbour' and watercolours 'Bodinnick on Fowey River' and 'Gobblecock Hall, Sutton Heath'. As well as an accomplished watercolour artist, Harriet had studied the violin in Hanover and in London and was leader of the Woodbridge Orchestral Society, a committee member of the Woodbridge Festival and of the Ipswich Chamber of Music. In 1939, as Harriet Venn-Ellis she was a patient in the East Suffolk & Ipswich Hospital and, as Harriet Grace Ellis, was of St Joseph's Guest House, Cumberland Street, Woodbridge when she died at 53 Barrack Road, Woodbridge on 1 November 1939, aged 62, she was unmarried.