Christina Diana Mary Kingsmill, 3.05.1950–17.07.2025

With thanks to Christina’s son Charlie, and the tribute he gave at the celebration of her life on August 7th 2025.

Christina was born in Purley, Surrey but the family soon moved to Bishopstone near Swindon where she grew up. She was the second of four children with an older brother and two younger sisters. An idyllic childhood is remembered with family holidays in Polzeath, a pony and a village school.  She  moved to a secondary school but her parents felt she was not flourishing and decided instead to send her  to Sidcot. Christina’s family credit Sidcot with “emphasising principles that shaped her life: creative thinking, creativity, curiosity and social responsibility”. Under the influential and inspirational Head of Art, Jim Bradley, she nurtured a  love of arts and crafts which was to  be such a large part of her future life.

After Sidcot Christina completed an Art  Foundation Diploma at Oxford Poly and then moved on to the London School of Printing and Graphic Art.

In 1974 she married Brent travelling with him to live in Malawi and her first child Charlie was born in 1976. The marriage dissolved in 1977 and Christina and Charlie return to England in 1978. She married again and had two more children, Natasha in 1979 and Lara in 1983. During this period Christina was very active enrolling in local courses, starting a residential relocation company and a machine knitting business among other things.

Christina moved to America with her husband Chris but observed that “ Californians didn’t raid skips or hang their washing out” as she liked to do. In 2003 after 25 years of a happy marriage and raising her three children, the marriage came to an end and Christina returned to England soon to take up the role of Granny which she loved and at which she excelled.

In 2005 Christina opened a photographic gallery in the town of Chipping Camden which was to be her home town until her death. She was a very active member of her local community with an allotment, undertaking to map the local Orchard, involved in arts, crafts and quilt making, a good friend to many and always looking out for a treasure in a skip!

Christina was a regular attender at our major Sidcot reunions and went with some of our year group on a memorable holiday to Kerala in 2020. She was a much valued and loved member of our weekly form zoom calls right up until her death.

Christina lived her life to the full right up until her peaceful death, from a rare form of leukaemia, on July 17th 2025.