My mother, Hilary Mackintosh, who has died aged 81, was a teacher, francophile, and community activist who campaigned against inappropriate commercial building developments in west London in the late 1980s and early 90s.
One of the campaigns that she was involved in culminated in the preservation of Bradmore House, a Grade-II listed building on Hammersmith Broadway, in 1994.
She was born in Shanghai, the daughter of Sidney Hunt, a military attaché, and Thyrza (nee Trusted). With her mother and sister, Ann, Hilary escaped to Australia in 1941 as war with Japan appeared inevitable. After the war the family lived in south-west France, where her father demobilised a camp for Polish prisoners of war at La Courtine. There, Hilary’s adoration of France was born, and she and Ann spoke French to one another.
The family returned to the UK in 1948, settling just off the King’s Road in Chelsea, and Hilary attended the Lycée Français in South Kensington, thus enhancing her French language skills, which was put to great effect in subsequent travels in the Dordogne and Brittany.
She met Ian Mackintosh, a civil engineer, at a squash club, and they were married in 1962; their daughter, Catherine, was born in 1964 and I was born two years later at Kainji field hospital, Nigeria, where Ian was working on the construction of the Kainji Dam, part of a huge hydroelectric project.
Back in London from 1967, living first in Kensington, Hilary saw a recruitment poster for primary school teachers, and attended night school at Sidney Webb College, in Westminster, qualifying as a teacher in 1972. The same year the family settled in Hammersmith.
Hilary’s first teaching position was at St Barnabas and St Philip’s primary school in Kensington (1973-77), then at Miles Coverdale (1977-80) and Ellerslie (1980-84) primary schools in under-privileged Shepherd’s Bush. She taught business studies at Fulham Cross secondary school, Hammersmith (1984-88) and Hammersmith and West London College (1988-94), then was a peripatetic teacher teaching English as second language to adults.
Following her retirement in 1997, Hilary embraced community initiatives as varied as the Shepherd’s Bush Improvement Group, which aimed to enhance the public realm on and around Shepherd’s Bush Green, the Barn Elms Allotment Society (only reluctantly giving up her highly productive plot in her late 70s) and the Latymer Court Freehold Company. She had great integrity and got on with everybody.
She was also a Staffordshire bull terrier fancier, expert Victoria plum tree cultivator, jam maker extraordinaire and devoted fan of all sport on TV, but especially curling, pole vault, weightlifting and southern hemisphere rugby union.
Hilary was diagnosed with cancer in June. She is survived by Ian, Catherine and me, five grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and by Ann.
