Hilary Stratton

Hilary Byfield Stratton FRBS (29 June 1906 – 20 May 1985) was an English sculptor, stonemason and teacher working in the 20th Century. He is best known for his stone carvings and memorials but experimented in other media that included: perspex, copper and resin. Stratton was an adherent of Eric Gill, with whom he was apprenticed at the age of thirteen, and the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement was evident in much of Stratton's work. Early life Stratton was born in Amberley in West Sussex, the son of Frederick Stratton (1870-1960), a commercial painter and watercolorist and Lucy Stratton. Amberley and the neighbouring hamlet of North Stoke were the centre of an artistic community that included Edward Stott who settled in Amberley in the late 1880s and which over the next forty years attracted many aspiring artists and musicians including some that became eminent such as Arthur Rackham and John Ireland. His father who in the 1920s had a studio in Chelsea was a major influence on the young Stratton, encouraging him to practice with different materials and when Stratton Jr was just twelve he carved a Portland stone figure of an ancient Egyptian supporting a bowl under his knees. At the age of just thirteen Stratton was apprenticed to Eric Gill, a friend of his father in Ditchling, cycling the twenty five miles from home on a Monday and returning on a Friday. It was with Gill that Stratton learnt the technical skills required of a stone mason. His bas-relief carving appears on the War Memorial at South Harting unveiled in 1920 and attributed to Gill. On completion of his apprenticeship Stratton studied sculpture at St. Martin's School of Art leaving at seventeen years to attend the Royal College of Art, where he studied under Gilbert Ledward and Henry Moore. In July 1937 Stratton married Eileen Letitia Despard (1910–1997) known as Billie, the niece of the suffragette and Sinn Féin campaigner Charlotte Despard. They met whilst Despard was posing as an artist's model.