My friend Annie Evans, who has died aged 68 of cancer, was unassuming, understated and modest. She made a significant contribution to social housing in London and was also a talented artist.
Born and brought up in Portsmouth, Hampshire, Annie was the only child of Irish parents, Hilda (nee Whelan) and Green Evans. Her father came to Britain during the second world war and joined the RAF. Her mother was a nurse who worked at the Victoria hospital in East Grinstead, West Sussex, at the burns unit that treated the RAF aircrew who came to be known as members of the Guinea Pig Club.
Family holidays were spent touring Ireland with her parents in a motorcycle and sidecar plus dog, and sometimes an aunt. Annie remained close to her parents, caring for them in their final years.
She studied geography at Aberystwyth University and travelled in Asia – embarking on the Magic Bus that started in Totteridge, north London, and made its way across Europe and through Afghanistan. After working in planning she moved into development in social housing with Newlon Housing Association in London. She and I met in 1986 as development workers for Solon East Co-operative Housing Services in Whitechapel, east London, buying and developing land and properties for housing co-operatives to provide homes for their members.
In 1990 she moved to the Community Housing Association in Chalk Farm, working there until retirement in 2014. She believed that everybody was entitled to decent housing that they could afford. She was astute in her dealings in the property market, good on design, and always made a difference.
Painting was a lifelong love and pastime, and Annie produced powerful and interesting works of art, ranging from sketches of London landscapes, many of them the basis for subsequent paintings, to Cornish seascapes and portraits, including a Windrush series, and drawings and paintings with humanitarian themes. She had a great love of gardens and gardening, too, and obtained a diploma in garden design at Capel Manor College.
Annie was a wonderful friend – kind, patient, interested and very good company. She loved travelling, walking and yoga, and was knowledgable about all sorts of things, but particularly about art, buildings, plants and the environment.
Over the past 10 years Annie dealt with illness very much in the way that she dealt with life generally – with the support of her partner of more than 20 years, Paul Canty, whom she married last year, and who survives her.
