Hugh Richard (Dick) Hosking and Alma Ramsey were the parents of Sarah, who founded the Trust using the family surname.
Dick (1904-91) came from a Warwickshire artisan family that rose socially.
Dick as a baby with his twin sister
and parents 1905
Click on any image to see it full size
Alma came from a property-owning family that sank disastrously.
Alma (on the right)
with her sister in 1914
They were both anomalies in their families by exhibiting artistic abilities and they met at the Royal College of Art in 1926 where Dick studied mural painting and Alma studied sculpture.
Photograph of the pair
c1928
They married in 1930.
Wedding photograph
Christmas Eve 1930
They had two children, Simon and Sarah.
Stencil Christmas card 1940
by Dick showing the family
Dick devoted himself to art education and became the principal of Coventry College of Art (1948-65) and he was a founder member of the Warwick Society in 1952 (one of the earliest civic societies).
Dick and Alma in Edwardian fancy dress
at the Christmas Ball
The family lived in Warwick at Coten End, and Simon and Sarah attended local schools.
The family in 1955
Both Dick and Alma continued to work as artists and enjoyed modest successes.
The Finding of Moses
(77.5 x 83cms) oil painting 1933,
Dick Hosking, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery
Dick’s best known public work is his design for the mosaic of the Coventry Martyrs, Broadgate House, Coventry (1956)
Coventry Martyrs mosaic
Alma worked as an artist from her basement studio in Warwick until her death in 1993. She drew and sculpted continuously and especially loved the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire.
Charcoal drawings 1969
Alma’s best known public work is the Nativity and Epiphany Crib at Coventry Cathedral for which she was commissioned to make the figures by Basil Spence in 1962. (It was restored in 2007)
Coventry Cathedral crib
displayed for Christmas …
… and re-displayed for Epiphany
Dick died of a stroke in 1991 and Alma of leukaemia in 1993. They both had broad cultural interests and the Hosking Houses Trust aims to reflect these in its developing work.
Work by both Dick and Alma is deposited in the Leamington Museum and Art Gallery with a prepared biography of each of them. Further work by Dick is in the archives at de Montfort University, Leicester. Much of Alma’s work is in private collections, also in the Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry and both have public work in Broadgate House, Coventry.
Memorial to Dick in the chancel of
St Mary’s Church, Warwick
designed and carved by Alec Peever 1996