This blog has been researched and written by Shelley Lanser, one of the volunteers on our maternity care project. Project volunteers are researching maternity care in Northumberland with particular focus on Castle Hills Maternity Home, Berwick, and Mona Taylor Maternity Home, Stannington. In 1943, Lady Ridley gave an address at the opening of Mona Taylor Maternity Home. She was also heavily involved in the Newcastle Babies Hospital for many years and organised the evacuation of the Hospital to her home, Blagdon Hall, during World War Two. This is the second of several blog posts about Ursula Viscountess Ridley, who married the 3rd Viscount Ridley. The first post can be found here – Lady Ursula Lutyens Ridley (1904-1967) – Northumberland Archives
Ursula Lutyens, daughter of noted architect Edwin “Ned” Lutyens and Lady Emily Lytton Lutyens, was born 31 Oct 1904 in the parish of St. Giles in London1 and baptised at St. Giles in the Fields church on 12 December of that year.2 She was a sickly baby born with webbed feet. “Ursy’s” illness and Ned’s lack of support for Emily – he was, as usual, disappearing into his work – was the first crisis in her parents’ marriage.3 It has been mooted that fears for Ursula’s initial poor health sparked Ned’s protective feelings and this was a factor in making her his favourite child. This is a preference he never attempted to hide.4
Ursula was named after St. Ursula, seen in paintings by Carpaccio, which were held in Venice. Having searched for evidence that their parents had been to Venice prior to Ursula’s birth, her sister Mary concluded this influence was by reproductions of the Carpaccio series. In addition to his daughter’s name, they inspired Ned to design a couple of beds made of mahogany with wicker work head and foot. Barbie and Ursy slept in what they always called the St. Ursula beds.5
The first home of the Lutyens family was a Georgian house at 29 Bloomsbury Square, in London. This house was once the office of renowned architect, Norman Shaw. Ned described it as “a country house, but with good architecture.” It was really beyond his means, but he splashed out on the £200 rent. When they moved in, his priority was arranging his basement office.6 When he got around to decorating upstairs, he did not follow the trends set by contemporaries Charles Rennie Mackintosh or Baillie Scott, but painted the dining room walls red and the floor green, colours that went with the simple 17th century English oak furniture he designed. The drawing room walls were painted black.7
After the first two children came along, Barbie and Robert, the children were confined to the nursery on the top floor; the basement was off limits. In addition to the day nursery and the night nursery, where Nannie slept with Ursula, Mary and Elisabeth, there was also a small bedroom in which three maids slept. This included a well loved nursery-maid, Annie McKerrow, who joined the family when Ursula was four or five. The cook slept in the basement. A sewing woman came three days a week and made all of children’s clothing and most of Lady Emily’s. (Ned nicknamed her Miss Sew-and-Sew).8 The family lived in this house until the 1914, when the lease ended and the house was scheduled to be demolished.9
One gathers that Ursula was a boisterous child. When she was only two and a half, Ned wrote to Emily about her nephew, Tony, being so obedient when their own children were so rude and disobedient. “[Tony] came to see me in my room and told me he could make more noise than the whole of my family. I said not more than Ursula – he said No, not more than Ursula.” Ned’s comment was “Oh dear.”10 In one of her letters Emily commented that Robert (aged seven) “looked like a guttersnipe” while eating a bacon sandwich. As a “determinedly progressive mother” she was pleased about this. “I’m glad to think that there is no trace of played-out aristocracy about Robert or indeed any of the children – Ursula the most.”11 While the wording is a bit confusing it would appear that, at the age of three anyway, Ursula’s manners did not predict she would marry into a titled family.
While there were understandable reasons for Ursula not getting along with her youngest sister, Mary, later in life, even as a small child she was jealous and scrapped with the next youngest sister, Elizabeth, a pattern that continued. One night, Betty and Ursula were watching infant Mary in her mother’s arms. Betty announced to Ursula, “That baby is mine.” Ursula’s response was to ask her mother, “Don’t you think Betty would feel much better if she didn’t talk?”12
Part of this rivalry may have been sparked by the fact that soon after Mary’s birth, their mother turned her attention away from home and family. She initially put her energy into a variety of interests, including social work and the Women’s Suffrage Movement,13 but in 1910, when Ursula was five or six, Emily’s real passion became the Theosophy Society.14
If Edwin Lutyens was absorbed by his work and Lady Emily by Theosophy, it may be of interest to consider other adults who were present during Ursula’s youth. As stated previously,15 Nannie (Alice Louisa) Sleath played an important role in the children’s lives. Once Nannie joined the Lutyens family she remained with them until her death, largely supplanting Emily as their mother. Even when Barbie was older Emily never felt she was able to get close to her eldest daughter. It was Nannie who taught the children Victorian songs,16 helped Ned pack for India when Emily was away with friends from the Theosophical Society17and who attended a speech by a Labour candidate with Emily, because she expected rowdiness. Nannie wrangled the children’s birthday £1 out of Ned: ‘Come on now, Sir, I want a pound from you for Mary’s birthday.’ ‘Not now, Nannie – later – I’m in a hurry, and it’s not her birthday yet.’ ‘ No, now, Sir – you know what you are – and we shall be away on her birthday.’ She got the £1. Nannie wasn’t in awe of Ned and Mary observed that he didn’t really like her. Mary attributed it to his being jealous because the children all adored Nannie,18 except perhaps Betty, who sounds as though she might not have liked anyone.19
As the children outgrew needing a nannie, sometime in the early 1920’s she changed her clothing to fashionable attire, wore nail polish and an engagement ring, though the engagement apparently never developed.20 Mary remarks that “Far from becoming the old family retainer she had grown very smart and looked years younger.”21 After the children were grown Nannie was only really happy when she went to look after Barbie’s children, while their own nannie was on holiday. In 1935, with the birth of Mary’s first child, she found the perfect nannie for Mary, one who like her ‘never wanted a day off.’ Nannie Sleath died age the age 65 from liver cancer. She was nursed for months by Emily and a nurse. Alice Louisa Sleath was buried in the churchyard at Knebworth.22
1 England, General Register Office, PDF copy of an entry of birth, for Ursula Lutyens, born 31 Oct. and registered 6 Dec. 1904; a copy of an entry in the certified copy of a register of births in the registration district of St. Giles, County of London, Vol. 01B, p 579.
2 London Metropolitan Archives; London, England, UK; London Church of England Parish Registers, accessed on Ancestry.com. London, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1924 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1558/records/14775939?tid=&pid=&queryId=7e267ac1-a648-4529-a2b0-3cd33a4a2777&_phsrc=UmY615&_phstart=successSource accessed 19 Mar 2025.
3 Ridley, Jane. The Architect and His Wife – A Life of Edwin Lutyens (London, Chatto & Windus, 2002) p 159.
4 Lutyens, Mary, Edwin Lutyens by his daughter (London: John Murray, 1985), p 148.
5 Lutyens, p 61.
6 Ridley, Jane. The Architect and His Wife – A Life of Edwin Lutyens (London, Chatto & Windus, 2002) , p 121-2.
7 Ridley, p 137.
8 Lutyens, p 61-2.
9 Lutyens p 128.
10 Percy, p 138.
11 Ridley, p 169.
12 Ridley, p 179.
13 Lutyens, p 87.
14 Lutyens, p 89.
15 https://northumberlandarchives.com/2024/09/03/lady-ursula-lutyens-ridley-1904-1967/. Accessed 19 Mar 2025.
16 Lutyens, p 205.
17 Ridley, p 212.
18 Lutyens, p 71.
19 Ridley, p 243.
20 Ridley, p 322-3.
21 Lutyens, p 223.
22 Lutyens, p 267.
