The Walmsleys of Robin Hood’s Bay – Father, Son, Artist, Writer was our talk on 7th February 2026 given by Jane Ellis who told us about author Leo Walmsley and his father, artist James Ulric Walmsley.
Jane started by telling us about Leo who grew up in Robin Hood’s Bay in the 1890s. As an author he always wrote about what he knew – his childhood in the Bay and his subsequent life adventures. The talk included passages which Jane quoted from his books and was illustrated with many interesting photographs.
James Ulric, Leo’s father, was an artist who left city life in Liverpool and settled in Robin Hood’s Bay in which he found inexhaustible inspiration. He had a studio and advertised himself as artist and photographer and also sold artist’s materials. He partly earned his living by painting very good portraits and landscapes; he would set up his easel on local streets to paint and used this to advertise his wares to passers by. His wife Ginny was a bit of a snob, dressed the children in fancy clothes and fancied she was above the local fishermen. She gave the children elaborate names in case they were knighted.
We were told about Leo, christened Lionel and his childhood with his brothers and sister and the beach being their playground. Leo founded the Whitby Nature Club in 1913. He got a job as a pupil teacher in various schools and worked in the marine laboratory with students. Leo knew the rock pools and their inhabitants well and was encouraged by friends to write an article for the Whitby Gazette which was accepted and he would eventually write a book on this subject.
On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Leo enlisted and was allocated to the Royal Army Medical Corps but he wanted more adventure and applied to join the Royal Flying Corps. Posted to East Africa he kept a diary of his time there, illustrated with photographs; he was one of the world’s first aerial photographers. His experiences in the war left him with neurasthenia for the rest of his life after he survived fourteen crash landings. Out of the service, he continued to write about what he knew and went on lecture tours which also acted as recruitment drives, where he met his first wife Suzanne and they went camping together through the Pyrenees. Leo missed Robin Hood’s Bay and temporarily came back with his wife but she did not like it so they moved to London where he knew Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Eventually he would split from his first wife and met his second wife Margaret but they caused something of a scandal when they lived together in an old WW1 Cornish hut on the coast. Leo made all the furniture and then children came along. He wrote a best seller called the Three Fevers and also a book about his invention of the collapsible lobster pot. They moved to a house on the outskirts of Whitby and Leo met J Arthur Rank who hated trashy American films and had an ambition to make a film about working people; this had also long been an ambition of Leo’s. A film was made of his best selling book and called the Turn of the Tide and filmed at Boggle Hole and in the studio.Leo built his own house in Boggle Hole, wanting his children to have a happy childhood, unlike his own. He wrote more books whilst living there but unfortunately the nearby moors were requisitioned for artillery practice which didn’t help Leo’s neurasthenia and the family moved to Pembrokeshire and he worked on a farm with a fellow writer. He found a derelict John Nash mansion and refurbished it and moved there. He then split with his second wife who left him and took the children with her. He was commissioned to write his autobiography ‘So Many Loves’ and eventually moved back to Cornwall but Margaret and the children never came back. He met his third wife Stephanie and moved into a house in Fowey which they rented from Daphne de Maurier.
Leo died in 1966 of throat cancer and his ashes were scattered at sea. His father Ulric was happy to live out his life in Robin Hood’s Bay. He had always painted and his ambition was to have a painting accepted by the Royal Academy, an ambition which was eventually realised at the age of 93. He died in 1954.
Jane brought her talk to a close by telling us a little about the Walmsley Society and their centenary celebrations.
Lorraine Simpson
