My mother, Caroline Compton, who has died aged 81, lived a large part of her life in Hampstead, north London; in fact much of it in the same street, Downshire Hill, at numbers 47, 48 and finally 41. Her parents, Diana (nee Croft) and Fred Uhlman, were well-respected Hampstead characters, their home a hive of activity, where the Free German League of Culture and the Artists’ Refugee Committee were established.
In the book Hampstead Memories (2000), Caroline recalled stables in Downshire Hill, sheep grazing at nearby Kenwood, skating on the Whitestone Pond, and a ski jump constructed on scaffolding with snow brought from Norway, appearing as if by magic on Hampstead Heath.
Caroline was born during the second world war in Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire. Her father, a German-born artist and writer, was interned on the Isle of Man at the time of Caroline’s birth, an event that inspired him to produce a series of drawings of a girl with a balloon, symbolising hope and forming part of a published collection of internment drawings later titled Captivity.
Her early life in Hampstead was spent surrounded by left-leaning members of the artistic community who informed her sense of social justice, which remained strong throughout her life.
She attended Burgess Hill junior school in Hampstead, where wrongdoing was considered a subject for questioning and analysis rather than punishment, and then went on to Parliament Hill school for girls, which with its more traditional attitudes came as a culture shock. Later, at St Clare’s school, Oxford, she enjoyed the independence of student life, mixed with undergraduates, and discovered the Modern Jazz Quartet and stiletto heels.
In 1963 she spent some time as a volunteer at a camp in Austria for displaced people.
Three years later she married Albert Compton, known as “Compo”, a builder, and together they worked to restore and revitalise the interiors and garden of Croft Castle, in Herefordshire, which had belonged to her mother’s family and had been passed into the care of the National Trust. Her connection to the place remained strong.
In her role as “keeper” of her father’s work, she was much interviewed by authors and art historians. She was also sought after by those researching the émigré experience, most notably for her recollections of the Artists’ International Association Gallery and two exhibitions of her father’s work in Germany, the most recent celebrating 1,700 years of German Jewish life.
Her last 10 years were spent in Oxford, close to her two grandchildren.
Her marriage to Compo ended in divorce in 1976. She is survived by two children – me and my brother, Tristram – and her grandchildren.
