Talented artist and wife of former MP dies aged 96

Lady Margaret regarded her role as distraction from her love of art

Lady Margaret Crouch, who has died age 96, was an acclaimed landscape artist and wife of former Canterbury MP Sir David Crouch.

Born in Shorne near Gravesend, Margaret Maplesden came into the world in August 1919, nine months after the Armistice marked the full point of the Great War.

While her brother went to King’s, Canterbury, the young Margaret and her two sisters were schooled at home by a governess.

She quickly developed a passion for painting, attending art schools in Gravesend and Kennington, south London.

In 1946 she met a young officer from the City of London Yeomanry, David Crouch, who was in Gravesend decommissioning guns used in the Second World War.

They married a year later at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Shorne.

Mr Crouch left the military and went to work for ICI, where he was employed in the textile section.

He developed an interest in Conservative politics and the family moved to Harrogate.

Mr Crouch ran in the 1959 general election, losing in the safe Labour seat of Leeds West.

At the general election of 1966 he won the seat of Canterbury and Whitstable and Mrs Crouch settled into the life of the wife of a Conservative MP.

Although she continued painting she dutifully attended constituency functions and interminable meetings of Conservative associations in draughty village halls.

She regarded her role as the MP’S wife as a distraction from her true love for art.

When she found time she painted the Kent landscape, her fondness for it borne of the roll- ing hills in the Weald, the flat marshes of the south and the rare light offered by the sky where the English Channel meets the North Sea.

The family, including the couple’s son Patrick and daughter Vanessa, lived variously at Littlebourne, Westmarsh and Throwley.

Mr Crouch retired from politics in 1987 and received the knighthood. Mrs Crouch became Lady Margaret.

Her husband died in 1998 and she spent her last days in the south of Canterbury, most recently in a large house in Pilgrims Way.

Lady Margaret Crouch passed away on March 10.

Her funeral will be held in the Crypt at Canterbury Cathedral at 2pm on Wednesday, March 30.

Lady Margaret Crouch and her husband Sir David on the day of his knighthood in 1987