Mary Epps

(1908–1996)

Mary Camille Louisa Epps was born in Clapham Park, Lambeth, on 31 May 1908, the daughter of James Washington Epps and his wife Maude. J W Epps was a former chemist who had just been made managing director of the family cocoa manufacturing company John Epps Ltd.

The family moved out to Weybridge, Surrey, and at the age of four Mary was enrolled in the Hall School run by Eva Gilpin, a pioneer in creative and child-centered education. Mary's brother John was born in 1914.

The family then moved east to the village of Warlingham, Surrey. Here Mary made friends with Margaret and Sigrid Adams, and their elder brother Geoffrey, who were born and raised in the village. Their father was English but their mother was of Swedish extraction, and the children were bi-lingual. Mary attended Warlingham School for Girls until she was nine, after which she was home-educated by a governess. In 1921 she went to Roedean, but perhaps she was unhappy there, because in 1922 she moved to Croydon High School, where Sigrid was enrolled.

She did well at Croydon, excelling at art, and after she left, in 1926, she went on to get a place at the Slade School of Art.

In 1934 she joined the Dennis Connelly animation studio. Connelly was an Australian who planned to make a series of colour cartoons featuring a pair of Koalas called Billy and Tilly, and hired a staff of young women fresh from art school to animate and inbetween straight onto cel. In an article by columnist Harold A Albert, Mary is identified as "the studio chief." 40 or 50 young women worked in the studio at its height. One of the early recruits was Joy Batchelor, who having criticised the animation was given the job of doing better. So she taught herself to animate "after a fashion" and subsequently trained others. However, the two films they completed were not well received and the studio closed down in 1936.

Mary Epps does not seem to have been employed on any further animation work. In fact I am unable to account for her whereabouts before or during the War.

It is possible that she spent some time in Sweden – four of her oil paintings (one signed and dated 1942, two signed and dated 1947 an one unsigned and undated) have turned up at a Swedish auction house, and she designed a set of 10 illustrated school cards showing English settings (At School; The Drawingroom; In the Street; The Railway Station; etc.) for hanging on schoolroom walls to stimulate English lessons, published in Stockholm in 1951.

Margaret Adams had been working for the British Embassy in Stockholm, but after the War she returned to London to work for the Overseas League. In the Summer of 1952 Mary Epps joined Margaret in a trip to South Rhodesia. This, in turn, seems to have led to a job opportunity in another British Colony. After sailing back to England at the end of July, she emigrated to Kenya in 1953, apparently to work as an art teacher.

When she retired she relocated to South Africa. She died in Knysna on 11 March 1996.

Filmography

Links to Other Sites

Website Title Description.

Website Title Description.

Website Title Description.

Back to top of page