Biography of tragic mother who was one of Suburb's first residents

It was her dad's "beautiful memories" of his childhood that prompted her to research her grandmother Bessie Quinn, who rose from a poor Irish family in Glasgow's tenements to a modern home in the progressive Hampstead enclave - rubbing shoulders with the likes of George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells.

Bessie with her sons Cecil and Gordon taken in Langfier's Studio at 343 Finchley Road (Image: Courtesy of the Howard family)

"My grandmother died young of the Spanish flu and vanished from history," she explains. "My father knew nothing but believed she was an Irish orphan. As he got older, he got quite upset not knowing who this woman was. He had an idyllic childhood in Hampstead Garden Suburb until her death, when he was 10, which turned his life upside down. Before he died I sat down to ask about her. I was determined to find out who she was."

Ursula's father Cecil was born at 22 Asmuns Hill in February 1909. Parents Bessie and Arthur Cecil had moved into the three bedroom semi in late 1907 while the Suburb was still being built. Henrietta Barnett's model development embodied Ebenezer Howard's utopian dream of a place that married the best of town and country, where all classes lived in harmony, in touch with nature, in modern housing managed by trustees with an interest in keeping it beautiful.

Bessie Quinn and sons Cecil and Gordon in the garden at 22, Asmuns Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb around 1917 (Image: Courtesy of the Howard Family)

"Ebenezer had progressive ideas about architecture, greenery, communal spaces and education," she says. "He arranged the house for them. For Bessie, who had grown up in abject poverty and worked in Scotland's mills, to end up leading a lovely life in a cottage with two precious boys must have seemed like heaven. Then to get hit in December 1919 by a pandemic that was almost over seems so unlucky. She was just 40."

Ursula researched Bessie's large Irish family, discovering hard work, emigration, ill health, and destitution. Born in Galashiels, Bessie worked in factories in Edinburgh and Glasgow, but in 1904 she moved to Keswick, a hotbed for the Arts and Crafts movement which attracted social reformers such as John Ruskin and National Trust co-founder Hardwicke Rawnsely. She worked as a cook in a Bed and Breakfast but Ursula believes she took classes in lace making and linen weaving, learned to ride a bike, and met her future husband when Ebenezer came to give a lecture.

Ursula's grandfather Arthur Cecil Howard in his 20s (Image: Courtesy of the Howard family)

"Ebenezer was part of a network of people who wanted to make life better for people in poverty, to open up the countryside, sweep away the slums and help working class people emancipate themselves. Their dream didn't happen, but it was a moment of energy, a new dawn. Bessie was one of those rare women who managed to turn her life around, how she managed it was a miracle, but it was a time when women were beginning to ride bicycles and demand the vote."

Living on a building site. Hampstead Garden Suburb under construction 1908 (Image: Copyright London Metropolitan Archives (City of London Corporation))

After marrying, the couple lived briefly in Muswell Hill while their house was finished. Designed by Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker, who were tasked by Henrietta Barnett with planning the suburb, it boasted a garden, large kitchen, and bathroom. Cecil and brother Gordon attended Henrietta Barnett school, and Ebenezer, who was friends with Wells, Shaw and music hall star Marie Lloyd, visited often.

Hampstead Garden Suburb Tenants' Social Council August sports 1913. Bessie Howard on the right in the women's egg and spoon race (Image: Copyright London Metropolitan Archives (City of London Corporation))

"My father remembers the school was socially mixed with more working than middle class kids. There are pictures of children maypole dancing, gardening lessons for toddlers. No wonder he thought he had been in paradise then lost it."

But after Bessie's death, her boys weren't allowed to attend her funeral at Golders Green Crematorium, and were sent to live with Ebenezer in Letchworth Garden City.

"They had been besotted with each other. Cecil Arthur was completely distraught, packed up the house and packed his children off to be looked after by Ebenezer, who held the family together. He made a disastrous second marriage and my father and uncle were ill treated, and shunted off to different relatives and schools. I could see the toll it took. My father couldn't stand it when children were enjoying themselves. He couldn't cope with ordinary happiness because he was angry and unhappy at having lost so much. Writing the book explained a lot about him, I could forgive him a lot."

The book has been "a labour of love" and now Ursula suspects her father, who died in 2002, was "more a Quinn than a Howard".

"I think he inherited a lot of Bessie's traits. There was something very un-English, unbuttoned up about him. He loved to sing and dance and drink."

After completing the book, she gathered descendants for a party at Fellowship Hall: "The people who live in Asmuns Hill now invited us over - you could feel the special spirit of community there."

Social reformer and urban planner Ebenezer Howard in his 50s around the time he visited Keswick to give a lecture (Image: Courtesy of the Howard family)

And she feels "very proud" of Ebenezer, whose funeral procession in Letchworth in 1928 was "a mile long," and whose ideas on urban planning inspired many.

"It's good to have someone in the family who gave so much to the world."

Bessie Quinn Survivor Spirit by Ursula Howard is published by The Endless Bookcase £18.99.